


>Dave: survive three years on this rock

by MadSeason (naive_wanderer)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Meteorstuck, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Slow Burn, interpersonal relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4392908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naive_wanderer/pseuds/MadSeason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Growing up on a flying meteor is hard work. You know this from experience.</p>
<p>TG: dude what is this piece of shit you just sent me<br/>CG: TO PUT IT IN YOUR HUMAN TERMS:<br/>CG: IT’S A FUCKING LOVE STORY, DAVE.</p>
<p>Well, it's a bit more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thirteen (1)

**Author's Note:**

> Pure wish-fulfillment, ID-y fic here, folks. I JUST WANT EVERYONE TO WORK OUT THEIR ISSUES EVENTUALLY.
> 
> Multi-chapter, will be continued shortly!
> 
> \-------
> 
>  
> 
> .

      The thing is, you’re not good at interacting with people, not really. You never learned how.

      You don’t know that at first, of course.

 

* * *

 

 

      The first thing you say upon meeting the gaggle of trolls, bloodied and in various stages of mental breakdown, is, “Sup, looks like it was some party,” which really should have clued you in a bit.

 

* * *

 

      There is a day or two of frenzied activity after you and Rose arrive on the meteor, in which everyone collectively decides to huddle together as one big unit to heal, meet-and-greet, and share as much information to “get the 8-8all rolling”, as Vriska puts it. You finally meet Terezi face-to-face; she calls you “coolkid” in a way that immediately makes you picture that worrying little smiley trailing after. She is small and pointy and somehow lives up to every expectation you never realized you had about her looks.

      After most of the loose ends are tied up and it dawns on all of you that you won’t be going anywhere for a long time, the high energy plummets and you disperse into your own little socially-awkward bubbles.

      You spend most of your time with Rose at first, which you figure makes sense considering A) she is one of your best friends, B) she’s technically your sister, and C) you are the only two of your species on a meteor of aliens.

      Also, you went on a suicide mission with her, and emerged as gods from the green sun with her. You’re finding it hard to keep your distance after that.

      Plus, many of the first few weeks of Meteor Living have to be spent figuring out how in the hell you’re going to survive well when you don’t know yet how to alchemize a wider variety of food that’s edible to you (cheesy tortilla chips and apple juice make up the majority of your diet for an agonizing few days), and Rose knows better what you’ll need to stay in good health (vitamin D deficiency, for instance, is not something you would have considered--it’s alleviated when she figures out how to alchemize sun lamps).

      Rose’s bedroom on the meteor is just down the hall from yours, so chosen in the unspoken agreement that you would both be too uncomfortable far apart. So, when you hear her scream in the night, you are down there so fast that the blanket is still halfway trailing off you by the time you get to her door.

      Which is locked. Of course.

      “Rose?” you call, because it’s gone quiet now and that is really, actually, starting to scare the hell out of you. There shouldn’t be anything on this meteor that can hurt you, since you’re not currently in a dreambubble, but that clown guy weirds you right the fuck out and you don’t know where exactly he’s been, seems like he’s just been crawling through the vents, maybe--maybe--

      “Rose?” you call again, slamming the side of your fist on the door. Images of the green sun float around in your head, how she nearly left without you--

      Rose opens the door. There are tired patches under her eyes, and her hair is a mess.

      “I’m all right,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. You’re starting to recognize that gesture as embarrassment. “It was just a dream.”

      “What kind of dream?” you ask. “A horror dream? A sex dream? One of those dreams where you’re flying but then you plummet to your death? I fucking hate those.” Your fist is still raised in the air, poised to knock, and Rose sighs in a way that is starting to make you feel more socially inept by the day. She rubs at her eyes.

      “Was it a sex dream that turned into a sex nightmare?” you ask, because panic makes you stupid.

      “Dave, I appreciate your concern and vigilance,” Rose says, “but we’re going to be spending three years on this floating rock. I think perhaps I’ve got to learn how to take care of myself and, I don’t know, interact with the other people here.”

      “Uh,” you say, “yeah, okay,” and you let her close the door on you after a quiet ‘goodnight’.

      It doesn’t take a genius to gather from that that she’s annoyed with your constant companionship, and maybe you don’t blame her, but it still feels like an eternity to shuffle back down the hall to your own room and lie awake in your own bed. Your first instinct, even now, is to open up Pesterchum and message John or Jade, but that’s obviously not an option. You already miss them like an ache in your chest.

      Your second instinct is to do something you always used to do when it was late and you couldn’t sleep—try and snoop around in your Bro’s stuff. He was rarely home before 3am.

      You aren’t sure how, or if, you miss him, yet.

      You wonder if Rose would fly down the hallway and knock on your door if you ever yelled in the night. You have nightmares too, but you never scream.

 

* * *

 

 

      You resolve to find a hobby. This turns out to be continuing your bout of Shitty Drawings with Terezi, but this time it’s Shitty Drawings with Terezi: Can Town Edition. This one has the added bonus of getting to know the Mayor, who is one of the raddest beings you’ve ever had the honor of meeting.

      One afternoon when you are still thirteen, Terezi pulls you forward by the edges of your cape and kisses you. It’s probably one of the weirdest things you’ve ever experienced—the damp softness of her lips and the just-barely-felt pricks of her teeth--and it makes your stomach do wild flip-flops way up into your ribcage. She releases you just before the Mayor returns from his expedition to find more chalk, and you finish up your day of Can Town Construction in a nervous mix of awkward silences and stretches of aimless babbling.

      Terezi tells you as you’re leaving that she doesn’t want to “human date” (“Or troll date,” she clarifies at your questioning eyebrow), which brings about the weirdest combination of simultaneous relief and disappointment that you have yet felt.

 

* * *

 

 

      The truth is, that after week three of Rose steadily ignoring you and wandering the halls looking like a ghost with those deep purple splotches under her eyes, you’re starting to get angry with her.

      You know she’s been inexplicably spending time with Karkat when she’s not with Kanaya, and you feel much less guilty about the possibility of having a confrontation with the former troll, so you stop him on his way into one of the common rooms.

      “Why do you think it’s any of your business?” is Karkat’s response, which pisses you off, but you’re not really sure how to show that yet.

      “Rose is my sister,” you say, even though that fact was not something you knew until fairly recently.

      “So?” Karkat says, hoisting his computer (or “husktop” or whatever they hell they call them) under one arm.  “It’s not like she’s been telling me your innermost secrets, Strider, horrifying and disgusting as I’m sure they must be. We’re just talking.”

      “Why is she talking to you though?” you ask, and Karkat puffs up like a bird with ruffled feathers, which--is kind of hilarious, actually.

      “I’m a good listener!” he yells, which actually makes you snort a bit with laughter--though the mirth is quickly swept away when Karkat goes on, “It’s not my fault she doesn’t want to talk to you. Maybe you should try slapping some kind of filter on your ignorance tunnel and being less of an unrepentant, fuckheaded jerk.”

      He stomps away, and you don’t get the chance to tell him how you’re trying so very, very hard not to be.

 

* * *

 

 

      You go through a sullen teenage day convinced nobody but the Mayor truly cares about you. Then he puts you in jail for trespassing.

      You go with it, of course, because it’s the Mayor. When Terezi walks in twenty minutes into your sentence with her arms full of cans, the Mayor gives her a cheerful wave,  and you think it’s your chance for a hilarious quip--but she walks out almost as quickly as she came.

      “I’m trash,” you tell the Mayor.

      He shakes his head, pointing at the sign on your makeshift cell reading “JAIL”; then he kicks away a few of the cans, giving you an exit, and opens his arms wide to the room. You’re free.

      “I’m free trash,” you say, readying yourself to stand and make for the exit.

      Abruptly, exhaustion washes over you, and you wrap your cape around yourself instead. “Maybe I’ll just chill here for a while, though,” you say. “Make some sheep, or something. Repay my debt to society.”

      The Mayor pats you on the head sympathetically, and hands you a few balls of cotton. You sit until you can almost--but not entirely, being a god damned Time player--lose track of the minutes, aimlessly pulling at the cotton balls until they’re fluffy enough to maybe, possibly, resemble sheep.

 

* * *

 

      “Are you okay?” Kanaya asks you one morning--or at least, you think it’s morning--as you’re going to get yet another cup of coffee from the alchemizer. You’re thirteen fucking years old, you never drank coffee before this--but you have the sneaking suspicion that making it is the only thing keeping you going right now.

      Kanaya is holding what looks like a syringe in one hand, and she has what looks to be a small streak of some kind of blood on her bottom lip. She looks elegant as ever. Fucking trolls.

      “No,” you tell her.

      Kanaya sits down, flings one arm over the table, and rests her forehead on it. It’s the most age-appropriate gesture you’ve ever seen from her. “Neither am I,” she says. “I am not exaggerating one bit when I tell you that I despise this meteor.”

      You stare into your coffee cup. “It sucks,” you agree.

 

* * *

 

      Rose finds you in the computer room, messing with the cords on the back of one because you don’t know what the fuck else to do. Maybe one of them will work with your computer, since you fucked up alchemizing the last one.

      She still has those dark circles under her eyes, and she looks like she was just recently crying. It’s the first time she’s spoken to you since that night you knocked on her door. You say, “What up,” because apparently you don’t know how to not be a douche.

      “You’re not a ‘douche,’” Rose says, and you realize you said that out loud. Fuck. “At least, not as much of one as you seem to think.”

      “Thanks,” you say.

      “Kanaya, Karkat and I thought it might be nice to have some kind of group meal,” Rose says in a rush. Your face warms with jealousy you didn’t know you had in you at the phrase, _Kanaya, Karkat and I_ , but you let it slide. “If not every night, then perhaps just a few times a week. It would be an agreeable way to break up the monotony a bit and actually have some social interactions, or share some cultural differences. I don’t know if... everyone would actually want to attend, but I’d like it if you did.”

      You stop your manhandling of knotted wires. “‘Agreeable?’”

      “Shut up.”

      “And Karkat didn’t throw a fit over this suggestion?”

      “I think he got tired of hating us,” Rose says. “We’ve got a long three years here. Maybe you could help me cook something?”

      You think about the hoarded packages of microwave dinners and ramen noodles stowed in your bedroom mini-fridge back in Houston, when Houston existed. “I don’t actually know how to cook much beyond, like, microwave noodles,” you tell her.

      “That’s all right,” she says, and she’s smiling, which is something you haven’t seen in a while. “I, myself, never got around to learning the finer points of the culinary arts.”

      This is Rose, who inexplicably didn’t talk to you for almost a straight month, inviting you to dinner and not even insulting your presumed cooking abilities. Rose, smiling at you and not bringing up that month of silence.

      “Yeah, okay,” you tell her, the relief breaking through you like a wave.

 

* * *

 

      “Can we talk?” you say, once you've mustered up the resolve.

      Terezi stops her drawing, and sighs in an overtly painful way. “Dave—“

      “We don’t have to date,” you blurt, before she can tell you to get lost. “But, like, as far as I know I didn’t actually do anything to piss you off besides exist, and I’m not going to apologize for that. I mean, if I did actually do something and you tell me what it is, I will, but if I recall correctly you were actually the one to betray my trust in a pretty damn mean way, and I have yet to hear an apology for that—“

      “I’m sorry,” Terezi says. There is a long, stifling silence, and you abruptly remember how her lips felt against yours, but that isn’t going to happen again, so you push the thought away.

      “Thanks,” you say finally, because you can’t think of any other response.

      “Allright, Dave,” Terezi says after another awkward moment, her voice heavy with annoyance, “you’ve got what you came for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m in the middle of some very important business.”

      She’s drawing indecipherable lines in red chalk, but you don’t point this out. “That’s not what I came here for.”

      Terezi doesn’t look at you, because she can’t, but she does narrow her eyes in your general direction.

      “Can you just tell me why you don’t want to hang out?” you ask. “I’m lost here and I feel like nobody wants to speak to me, but nobody’s telling me why, and I can’t fucking change something if I don’t know what it is.”

      That came out a bit more aggressive than you intended. Terezi’s eyes widen. She takes a big, loud inhale through her nose.

      “I don’t know why everyone else isn’t hanging onto your every word, coolkid,” she says, and the return of the nickname makes you feel marginally better. “But I—my alternate future self,” she pauses, “well, you know she changed things—one of them was sparing Vriska. Another was about not dating you.” She pauses again, and wrinkles her nose. “At least, I think it partially had to do with you, I don’t know. I don’t want to take any chances. The success of our session and my personal well-being is not worth risking just so I can fulfill some red whims.”

      “That’s… fair,” you say, eventually, because that’s a lot to take in.

      “So it was nothing you did,” Terezi says, with a defeated slump of her shoulders.

      “Look, I get all that, I just--I just thought we could be friends,” you say, and god does that sound corny now that you’ve said it out loud. “Even if we just, I don’t know, talk on pesterchum or trollian like we did before this stupid meteor trip. We don’t have to date. If I’m annoying the hell out of you, or if I become too scorchingly hot for you to resist, you can tell me to beat it. But you’re the only one that understands my subtle sense of humor.”

      Terezi thinks on this for a moment in a way where you can almost see the gears in her head turning. Then she grins, sticking out her hand. “I think I can do that,” she says, and when you grab her hand to shake she pulls you down on top of the chalk drawings, cackling as it smears all over your clothes.


	2. Thirteen (2)

      Karkat stomps up to where you’re sitting with your turntables, pulls the earbuds from your ears, and says, “Why are you hanging out with Terezi?”

      “Man, I know you were all gearing up to fight me over her or whatever,” you say, replacing an earbud because these beats are too sick to let go of just yet, “but you can cool your jets because she doesn’t want me that way. Also, it’s fucking weird to fight over a girl like she has no autonomy to make her own decisions, when were you born, like 1935?”

      “That series of numbers has no relevance to me,” Karkat grumbles.

      “Look,” you say, “Terezi is a strong woman who don’t need no man. She’s a single female lawyer, fighting for her clients, wearing sexy miniskirts and being self-reliant.”

      Karkat is looking at you like he’s watching you go insane before his very eyes. You’ve noticed that a lot of people you talk to in person give you that look. “Terezi doesn’t wear miniskirts,” he says.

      “Thank fucking god,” you say, and then, to Karkat’s continued blank look, “We’re not dating, Vantas. And far as I know, we’re not going to date.”

      Karkat sits down across from you, looking mildly constipated. “Then why are you still hanging out with her?”

      “Because we’re friends,” you say, slowly. “Don’t you have friends?”

      “ _Yes_ ,” Karkat spits. “Don’t condescend to me, you asinine bottom-feeder.”

      “Anyway, me and Terezi are friends,” you say, thinking _he’s losing the energy for trash-talking_ (but then again, so are you). “I mean, as friends as you can be with somebody who actually was kind of manipulative to you but later felt bad about it. Though it’s actually hard to get any one-on-one friends time with her because Vriska usually butts in after too long. Speaking of which--”

      Vriska flops down in the chair beside you, slapping down a sheet of paper.

      “What up, spider woman,” you say.

      “Hey, coolkid,” Vriska replies. You tense minutely despite yourself, and Vriska laughs her high, serrated-knife laugh. “What, is Terezi the only one allowed to call you that? Give me a break.”

      You can hear the implied “8” in the word “break”, the same way you can hear the formal harshness of Terezi’s typing quirk in hers, or the way Karkat literally yells everything he says the same way he types.

      Vriska gives you the low-down on the next dreambubble tasks, which mostly consist of her doing cool-sounding things while you stand around attempting not to dream-die. (She had tried to get you to use your god-tier powers for some kind of Plan once, but you’d nope’d so hard out of that conversation that she hasn’t even tried to ask you again).

      “She can be annoying as hell,” you mutter later, once she’s swept off to inflict the Presence of Vriska on someone else, and when you glance to the side you find that Karkat is giving you a look like a man dying of thirst might give a bountiful oasis.

      “ _Right?”_ he says, clutching at the table.

 

* * *

 

      You run into Gamzee only a few times in those first couple of months. You’re not sure what that guy’s deal is--you know he was tied up when you first met the trolls, and that now, for whatever reason, he isn’t, and you know that Vriska is somehow keeping tabs on him--but otherwise, you just have no fucking clue. He gives you a half-wild, half surprised look every time you cross paths, and then he wanders off quickly to do whatever it is he does. You never see where he goes.

      The only other person who seems to be as concerned as you is Karkat, but you’re not sure how the heck to bring that up.

 

* * *

 

      You’re thirteen (still), and you’re drawing with Terezi when Vriska appears, as she tends to do.

      “Drawing!” she exclaims, snatching a pencil and paper from your pile. “This is my kind of table.”

      “Oh hey, Vriska, wanna join us?” you say dryly as she starts to draw.

      When you’re finished, you and Terezi compare comics, snorting with laughter. Vriska makes a show of patience waiting for your giggles to die down, then holds up an immaculately-drawn picture of a pirate.

      “ _This_ is how a drawing’s done,” she announces. “Way better than those pieces of trash you two just spit out. Do I need to teach you?”

      “Well, yeah, it is a lot better,” Terezi says, grinning, and Vriska’s eyes narrow.

      “The point was to make shitty drawings,” you say. “It’s way more hilarious that way.”

      “This is our _art_ ,” Terezi says, giggling, picking up another piece of bright green crayon. Vriska flushes deep blue, slams her paper down on the table, and marches away.

      You turn to make some sort of comment to Terezi – “What’s her problem?” – but she’s already following Vriska, her cane left behind at the table.

      You remember confiding in Terezi when your Bro died, and everything that came after, and something pangs in your gut. But you also remember her confiding in you about the girl she used to call her scourge sister, and a decision she felt she needed to make.

      You try not to take it personally.

 

* * *

 

      “I’ve decided to be the bigger person, and to focus on the bigger picture, and therefore I’m going to stop pursuing Terezi romantically,” Karkat tells you. You are not sure why in the hell he brought this news to you.

      “Did she preemptively dump you, too?” you ask. “Or like, is it just not cool anymore if I’m not the competition? I didn’t know you felt that way about me, man. Should’a said something, bought me hate-flowers first.”

      You can actually see how hard Karkat is clenching his teeth. “Nevermind, and _fuck you_ ,” he says, slamming his romance novel down onto the arm of a plush chair, and flinging himself into it.

      You just barely resist the urge to burst into laughter as you return to your beats.

 

* * *

 

      You know that it’s stupid of you to feel upset over Terezi’s friendship with Vriska. It’s not like Terezi can’t have more than one friend, and she’s pretty much moirails with Vriska now whether you like it or not. Better to roll with it than whine and cry like a goddamn baby like you have been.

      But.

 

* * *

 

      You’re not often alone with Vriska, but tonight you quite literally bump into each other wandering the halls with insomnia. Almost every time you do run into her, you automatically think how striking she is: sharp angles like Terezi but tall, as tall as you (and you think she’ll probably outgrow you by the time your trip is done).

      Vriska makes a show of brushing herself off. “Watch it! I’m on my way to do some important business.”

      “Sure,” you say mildly, waiting for her to pass. But she doesn’t--she stands and looks you up and down, slowly. It’s unnerving. “What’s your deal?”

      "I don’t know what Terezi saw in you,” she declares, and you think, like a frazzled soccer mom,  _that was uncalled for_.

      All the same, something deep and angry in you comes bubbling to the surface, and you realize that for the first time you actually want to hit someone. You want to hurt her. “I don’t know what I’ve done to piss you off besides be friends with Terezi,” you say, “But you do realize she was going to kill you, right? She was going to stab you right through the gut, and she would’ve thought it was the right choice. She told _me_ all about it.”

      The words tear at your throat, regretted in the moment you have to breathe after saying them, because damn it, this is what you’re trying so hard not to be--

      “Oh _-ho!_ ” Vriska squeals, to your immediate horror, in delight. “Wow, Strider. I take it back.” She gives you a once over with those striking eyes, and, grinning, walks past you.

      You didn’t know you could feel this monumentally shitty about yourself.

 

* * *

 

      There is a big part of you that wants to talk over this whole stupid teenage friendship competition stuff with the Mayor, but you don’t want him to think less of you. So you settle for helping him set up the Can Town Public Library. You don’t even add graffiti this time.

      “Do you think I’m a decent person?” you ask, vaguely, as you work on the tiny steps leading up to the grand front doors. “I think I can be kind of a jerk but I’m never really trying to be. I think I’ve spent so long trying to cultivate this douchey, insincere persona that nobody can tell when I actually am being sincere. Even _I_ can’t.” You throw down your glue stick in disgust. “Fuck, what if I can’t actually connect with anybody at all?”

      The Mayor waves his arms in distress, and you follow his pointing hands to where the gluestick has lodged in the Can Town Central Park’s main feature, the Can Fountain.

      “Shit, I’m sorry,” you say, scrambling to remove it. Luckily, no lasting damage has been done.

 

* * *

 

      “How can you _eat_ that stuff?” Terezi exclaims, pointing at your plate of lunch.

      “What, scrambled eggs?” you say. Admittedly it’s not a lunch food, but--”C’mon, Terezi, I _know_ you guys eat eggs.”

      “We don’t _scramble_ them, whatever that means,” Terezi says, sniffing your food suspiciously. “Personally, I’d add a good dollop of grub sauce.”

       You make an exaggerated gagging noise, and Terezi giggles as she flops down into a chair. “Vriska! Let’s add your input to this scientific study. Would you eat this human monstrosity dubbed _scrambled eggs?_ ”

       It’s the first time you’ve seen Vriska since that short confrontation a few nights ago, and your heart drops into your belly with shame. She comes round to peer at your lunch.

       “It’s just eggs, babe, _really_ ,” Vriska says, and Terezi sighs loudly. “Though, no, I would not eat them. Not without grub sauce.”

       “You see!” Terezi cries, but you’ve lost the will to joke around. Vriska alchemizes two loaves of _something_ for herself and Terezi.

        You take a seat across from Terezi, Vriska takes one by her side, and you eat in silence for a few long minutes. You can tell Terezi can sense the tension by the way she drums two fingers softly on the edge of the table.

       “So,” Vriska announces with a fork halfway to her mouth, “I’ve gotta say, I was wrong about your taste in friends, Terezi!”

       Terezi swallows, and her nostrils flare. “You didn’t like my taste in friends?”

       “Not in the slightest. Aside from myself, of course--you lucked out there.” Terezi slaps Vriska on the arm, and you are getting more nervous by the second. “But c'mon, you know how I felt about Strider versus Egbert. I gotta say, though, Strider here’s got more chops than he lets on!” Vriska exclaims, and her mirth sounds so real that it sets the hairs on the back of your neck standing. “We had a nice little chat the other night.”

      “Look, I didn’t mean it like that,” you say through gritted teeth. “I don’t wanna be that kind of guy. I was being stupid.”

      Terezi’s face turns rapidly between the two of you. “What?” she says. “What were you two talking about?”

      Heat is rushing to your face. “Nothing, I’m _sorry_.”

      “Aw, Dave,” Vriska pouts, “Are you _trying_  to make me lose respect for you?”

      “I could not give less of a fuck whether or not you respect me,” you say. “If I had any fewer fucks to give, I would be in debt to--to whoever the hell it is that gives away fucks--”

      “You’re losing steam, coolkid,” Terezi interrupts. “Learn to quit while you’re ahead!”

      “TZ, you don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about,” you spit, standing up abruptly to leave. Terezi follows suit.

      “Excuse me?” she says, grabbing for her cane. “What did _I_ do--”

       “What _don’t_ you do!” you shout, which sounds like a line from a terrible soap opera, and which you've shouted loud enough that you think anyone down the hall could probably hear, but you don’t care. You can’t remember the last time you actually shouted. “I thought you wanted to be friends!”

      “I do!” Terezi shouts back--and now there _is_ someone watching from the doorway, fuck it. “That’s what I’m _trying_ to do, Dave, but you get weird every time I do something you might not like--”

      “That’s because every fucking interaction you--you and, and black widow over there--have with me is some kind of creepy manipulation to get me to, to what, be better? On this fucking useless piece of shit rock we’re stuck on as we fly to our deaths? I’m sorry I’m not the person you all want me to be--”

      “I have never said that!” Terezi yells, her grip on her cane turning white. “Maybe if you tried listening to what I’m actually saying, you’d understand--”

      “I don’t care what you have to say! I’m just--I’m done with you and every fucking horrifying thing about you, both of you, and if that’s what I have to be to be your friend, then I don’t _want_ to be your friend--”

      And then Terezi’s cane is three inches from your face, her mouth pulled back in a snarl, and you’re getting ready to--to what? Equip your sword?

      There’s a tear track on Terezi’s cheek, fuck. What in the actual hell are you doing?

      The rage _whooshes_ right out of you, leaving an intense sense of vertigo, and you turn on your heel, taking huge strides in your haste to leave, passing by Kanaya, Karkat, _and_ Rose on your way down the hall.

      “Wow,” you hear Vriska say on your way out, “That is so not what I was expecting to happen.”


	3. Fourteen (1)

      You ignore Rose’s pesterchum requests to talk, and she doesn’t attempt to bother you in person; you stop attending the group meals. Terezi doesn’t show up to Can Town again after your fight, which doesn’t surprise you--but Karkat does.

      “So,” he says, his too-loud voice jarring you out of your thoughts, “Uh, you and Terezi aren’t talking?”

      “Bro, can we just have one single conversation that isn’t about Terezi?” you snap, and Karkat crouches down by the Can Town Municipal Building, eyes widened and hands up in a peace gesture.

      “So this is Can Town?” he starts again, and you want to ask him why the hell he’s here, talking to you, but you already made enough of an ass of yourself in front of everyone, so you abstain.

      “The Mayor is normally here,” you say instead, “but he’s taking a break. I figure I’d get a head start on some of the government buildings while he’s away.”

      Karkat watches you for a while, handing you a can or a piece of chalk when he thinks you might need it. Embarrassment gradually fades away into a fragile sort of companionship, which is never something you expected to experience with Karkat.

      “I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but I know the reason you fought with Terezi was because of Vriska,” Karkat starts, ruining everything, and you try to pull the next can out of his hand with no success. “She’s like that with everybody. I mean, you’ve probably noticed, but she’s just--a huge bitch, I think Rose called her a ‘magnificent bitch’--”

      “Just how much have you been talking to Rose without me?”

      “ANYWAY,” Karkat goes on, “this is fucking stupid of me because I’m not even the leader anymore, but I’m pretty sure it would rattle everyone’s fragile nerves if we were constantly at this level of unbearable, shame globe-busting tension with one another.” You mouth _shame globes?_ at him, but he plows on. “I just--don’t take Vriska personally, okay? She’s terrible but she thinks she’s helping. I loathe it too, but she thinks she’s making people stronger, I think.”

      You look at Karkat from over the rim of your shades, which makes him squirm a little, and you manage to pry the can from his grip. “Then she needs to goddamn learn better,” you say. “Terezi does the same thing, sometimes.”

      “She usually regrets it,” Karkat says, but you don’t answer. You’re thinking unwillingly of someone else in your life who thought they could make you tougher, better, stronger.

 

* * *

 

 

      Being on bad terms with Terezi again, combined with your tension when you interact with any of the other trolls and the general sense of ennui you feel here, takes its toll. Shortly after your 14th birthday, you lose what little enthusiasm you had for being stuck on a flying rock with the same seven people for three straight years, and your anti-social tendencies come back in full force. You spend a lot of time being unable to do much more than lie on your bed and wonder whether slow, apathetic starvation counts as a just or heroic death.

    In the end, hunger is the stronger motivator (you still remember that first week on the meteor when neither you nor Rose could manage to alchemize anything resembling real food, and how absolutely shitty and horrible you felt), and you end up slapping together something resembling a sandwich most days, which you eat in bed.

      You can’t muster up the energy to get to your computer and answer Rose’s requests to talk. Eventually, it seems she gets fed up with this, because she breaks into your room.

      You don’t even object as Rose enters purposefully, crouches down beside your bed, and slides your shades up your forehead.

      “I sympathize with what you are feeling right now,” she says—and that makes you feel worse because really, nothing you’ve gone through is any more horrible than what everyone else has gone through, and none of them are being useless pieces of shit lying in bed all day feeling like rolling over is too much effort—“I think I went through it myself when, um, when we first got here--but please, my dearest brother, please take a shower.”

      “Why?” you ask; possibly the most existential question you have ever asked in your life.

      “Because you look and smell disgusting,” Rose answers, trying to pull you up by the sleeve. “Also, presumably you’ll feel better.”

      You stumble to the shower in the end, grumbling about how you’re supposed to be goddamn gods and your fucking god tier pajamas can grow and change with you but your shiny god bodies can’t even clean themselves.

      Rose sleeps on your floor for the next few days.

 

* * *

 

 

      You would say you’re still too embarrassed to be seen in front of the rest of the meteor inhabitants, but the truth is that you’re not entirely sure you’re capable of feeling embarrassment right now. You’re not entirely sure you’re capable of feeling anything.

      This has happened to you before, back when you were living with your Bro, which feels like a million years ago now. You can’t really remember what he did about it, if anything. You can’t remember what made you come back out of it.

      Rose tries to talk to you. She tells you about her experiences with depression and about how she gets it and that she thinks you’re both probably genetically predisposed to such things even if you weren’t trauma victims stuck on a space rock. Rose actually apologizes for pushing you away all those months ago. Rose brings in books and music and even her Very Secret Diary for you, and it becomes increasingly clear to you on some level that you are worrying her more than she initially thought she would be.

      Rose is there for you, and you appreciate it more than you have the ability to understand right now, but for a while there’s nothing you desire so much as sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

      Except, one day--after what feels like an exceptionally long hibernation--you wake up, and at that moment there is nothing you desire so much as sitting on the couch and watching TV. So you send Rose a message on your phone, pull yourself up on unsteady legs, and walk to the lounge.

      You think you spend a solid three hours in front of your computer screen, watching _Friends_ on repeat. You don’t even like _Friends,_ but you don’t really remember what happened in any of the episodes, so it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re not in bed.

      Karkat walks in midway through your fourth hour, and the face he makes when he sees you is enough to tell you how pathetic you must look.

      “Uh,” Karkat says, shifting his husktop awkwardly under one arm, “Whoa, haven’t seen you in a while? I can go somewhere else if you’re in here, I was just, uh… gonna watch this, and the acoustics are better in here… you know what, it’s a shitty movie anyway, never mind—“

      “Stay,” you call before he can leave. You don’t have the words to articulate how, you’ve suddenly realized, you desperately want company that isn’t Rose (much as you love her), and you think you’d be too embarrassed to say them if you could. “I mean, I don’t care if the movie’s shitty. I’m just chilling here. I love shitty movies, in fact.”

      That last one was probably too much, but Karkat sits down anyway, eyeing you a little warily.

      The movie seems to be the Troll equivalent of _Gigli,_ but a lot gayer. It is, in fact, extremely shitty, but at the end of it you don’t feel so much like your soul is going to evaporate, or like your body is going to collapse in on itself. So that’s a win.

      Karkat watches, enthralled, the entire time.

      “We should watch Con Air tomorrow,” you suggest dreamily, once the credits are through.

      Karkat makes a face. “Isn’t that that crappy movie John used to go on about? I don’t have that one,” he says. “If you have the human version, I guess we could…”

      In the end, Karkat finagles a copy from Vriska, and when you watch it the next day you cry at the end when he reunites with his loving wife and daughter. You cry at the bunny.

      Karkat looks at you sideways, and you know he can tell even with your shades on, but he says nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

      You thank Rose by walking all the way down to the library, and hand-delivering her Very Secret Diary.

      “I actually did not read a single word of that, if you can believe it,” you say, and Rose’s brief look of undisguised relief is quickly covered with an eye-roll.

      “Too bad, as that was your one and only chance to peer into my early-developing psyche,” she says. “Let’s hope you don’t live to regret it.”

      You want to say something snappy in response, or hug her, but you settle for a bro-fist, which she bumps with a surprised and delighted little laugh.

      You don’t know how to tell her how you feel, but you’ve learned over the past eight months that you’re both the same when it comes to feelings-jams, so you’re pretty sure she knows.

 

* * *

 

      “And after a long journey, he returns!” Vriska exclaims when you’ve finally regained the mental energy to attempt socialisation in the common room. “And he looks like a ghost. What have you been eating?”

      “I really don’t want to talk to you,” is all you can manage. Vriska shrugs, but doesn’t push it, turning back to her computer and Terezi, who does not even turn her head your way. That’s just as well; you’re not sure what you’re going to do to make that better, just yet.

      Kanaya and Rose are sitting together in a far corner, poring over some book. Rose looks up and raises her eyebrows in invitation, but you don’t want to interrupt their... whatever it is they have going on.

      Karkat is squinting at something on his computer by a table in the far corner. You walk over and sit across from him.

      “I’m just gonna listen to music here,” you say, even though Karkat doesn’t object to your presence there.

      “Sure,” he says distractedly as you put your headphones in. Then, with a little waving gesture of his hand, “Hey--don’t you think this girl’s horns look really weird? Just, like. Inappropriately weird.”

      He’s browsing through amateur art on what remains of the troll internet. The girl’s horns do, in fact, look unintentionally inappropriate.

      “They kind of look like dicks,” you agree, and Karkat nods seriously.

      “Thought so,” he says. Then, “What in the nookmunching hell are dicks?”

 

* * *

 

      Your personality comes back, bit by bit, and after a while it doesn’t feel so completely fucking hopeless anymore. Something or other makes you laugh, and you’re struck by how great that feels. How really, honestly great.

 

* * *

 

      “You’re spending a lot of time with Karkat,” Rose points out as you help her attempt to make something resembling a pot roast. You have never eaten a pot roast in your life, so you’re not sure whether it’s coming out right.

      "Yeah, he’s not so bad, as it turns out,” you say. “We’re becoming true movie connoisseurs.”

      “That frightens me a bit, I have to say,” Rose comments. She peers into the oven as though it will reveal its secrets to her if she just stares it down long enough. Of course, you both alchemized that oven, so you’re not entirely certain whether it works the way a real oven should. “Maybe we should have alchemized a pot roast.”

      “It wouldn’t be real that way. I don’t make the rules,” you say.

      Rose hums. After a while, you ask, “Are you going to ask Kanaya on a date?”

      Rose turns red all the way to her ears, which satisfies you on a very deep level. “ _Dave._ ”

      “What, did I ruin your coming-out speech?” you say. “I don’t fucking care who you like, Rose, but you can’t pretend like you haven’t been cozying up to her.”

      Rose sighs, and swipes a stray strand of hair behind her ear. It’s getting pretty long, now; yours must be too, now that you’re thinking about it. She says, “These things take time, Dave,” like you’re a very small child learning about the birds and the bees. Then, in quite a careful tone of voice, “Have you talked to Terezi?”

      “Not yet,” you tell her, slouching across the kitchen table, and Rose pats your hand.

 

* * *

 

 

      There are a solid few days where you don’t see Karkat at all except in passing. This sets off little alarm bells in your head, if only because you recently did the exact same thing.

      Eventually, you track him down in one of the smaller, unused rooms, hiding away in one of those weird plush piles the trolls like to make.

      “You okay in there?” you ask.

      “Go the fuck away, Strider,” says a muffled, wet, and angry voice from the soft pile.

      You inch closer, nudging at a plush toy with your foot. “Dude, I’m not trying to mess with you. It just seems pretty sad that you’re in there all by yourself.”

      “I repeat,” Karkat grunts, getting louder, “Go. The FUCK. Away—“

       “I’m coming in,” you announce, because if there’s one thing you’ve become exceptional at during this meteor trip, it’s being obnoxious, and you faux-dive into the pile complete with exaggerated crashing-wave sound effects.

       Karkat yells, but by the time you scoot far enough into the nest of plush toys, worn-out clothes, and the occasional horn that you can see his face, he goes quiet. Your sound effects die down into a quiet murmur, then silence. As you suspected, it’s clear he’s been crying.

       You know a little too well how that feels.

       “Wanna talk about it?” you ask.

       “Hell no,” Karkat answers. “I am not falling prey to the psychological dissections you and your genetic ‘sister’ inflict on innocent passers-by—”

       “My psychological dissections?” you say. “Number one, that’s Rose’s thing, not mine, and I fully agree it’s creepy as hell, and number two, why are you putting the word sister in scare quotes, that’s what she is—”

       “Trolls have no concept of ‘genetic sisters’, you ignorant fuckwit, and yes that is absolutely something you do, and you end up turning literally every infinitesimal bit of information you can get your sticky hands on into something you can use to awkwardly shunt some weird embarrassing fact about your inner psyche into the conversation—”

       “Okay, yeah,” you concede, “yeah, I do that. But it has been explained to you at least a dozen times what siblings are. It’s not like I walk around putting your troll relationship names like ‘kismesis’ in scare quotes—”

       “You JUST DID!” Karkat all but screams. “And you didn’t even say it right, you culturally insensitive—you total—“

       He’s working himself into such a snit that he can’t even think of an insult. “Douchebag,” you supply helpfully. “The word you’re looking for is ‘douchebag.’ Probably.”

       “Yes,” Karkat snaps. Then he goes silent, wrapping his arms around himself, and you scrabble for some proof that you didn’t just do what you literally always do and parade in to ruin someone else’s moment by making it all about you.

      “At least you’re not crying anymore?” you say, and you actually do cringe when Karkat levels his glare at you. But he doesn’t insist you get out.

      In fact, after a minute or two he sniffs, then asks in a surprisingly accommodating tone, “So what made you come find me?”

      You shrug, sending a dragon plush toppling and trying not to let the thrill of victory show too much on your face. “Who else is there? Rose is always hanging out with Kanaya these days, I’m still... not talking to Terezi, Vriska is obviously off the table, and I’m kind of freaked out by Gamzee when he shows up. Also, the Mayor was busy.”

      “So I’m literally the last fucking person you’d want to spend time with,” Karkat says.

      You cringe. “I didn’t mean it like that,” you say. “I was trying to lighten the mood. I came to find you because I haven’t seen you in a while.”

      “Great job with that,” Karkat mumbles. “You sure know how to bring the fucking cheer right back into a room.”

      "Look," you say, desperately trying to find words that won't live up to your reputation of Douchebag Extraordinaire, "You helped pull me back up when I was feeling like there was no point. Maybe you didn't realize that's what you were doing, but you did. I'm not just gonna let an act of, you know, kindness like that go un-repaid."

      Damn, you are being honest and heartfelt to the max right now. You think, as long as you’re doing this--"And I just like you as a person, man. I think we should just be bros already."

      Karkat scoffs visibly at this, and you wonder at what the fuck ever happened to this guy to make him so convinced of his own lack of worth.

      “No, dude, I do. I like you. You’re hilarious as shit, and you actually do know about a lot of stuff I’ve never thought of before, and you care a lot about people. Like, you really care, which is something I used to think was stupid and made people weak but the more I think about it and the more I grow up I’m realizing it’s just the opposite,” and most of that comes out in one breath. “You really care and that’s important, dude. More people need to care about others. And stuff.”

      Karkat stares at you for a long moment. Then he slumps back against the pile, the lines in his face gone smooth. “You made it about you again,” he points out.

      “I did,” you agree. “Fuck. But the moral of the story is, you’re cool, dude, even if I weren’t sitting here in this musty fucking plush pile to awkwardly tell you I think you’re cool.”

      After a while Karkat says, "Bros," like it's a concept he's never heard of before. Maybe he hasn't.

      “It’s like, friends plus an awesome tier of coolness,” you explain. “Friends to the max. It’s not, like, a human romance-y thing, or anything,” you add quickly.

      “Friends to to the max,” Karkat repeats.

      “Yeah. We’re pretty much doing that already, man. I have already watched more shitty movies with you than I can count. So let’s make it god damn official.” You hold out your fist for a bump, and Karkat, with an expression like he can’t quite believe he is actually doing this, bumps his fist into yours.

      “Fuck yeah!” you say, determined to keep the energy up now that you’ve made a complete fool of yourself. “So what’s the troll equivalent of this? Are we meow-pals now, or something?”

      “Moirails, and NO,” Karkat shouts, shoving you away by an inch or two. “I swear to god, Dave, if we are going to do this ‘friendship’ thing then you’re going to have to sit down for some serious lessons on troll culture and cultural sensitivity in general.”

      “Okay,” you say—and you’re smiling, which is something you do a lot more of these days than you ever thought you would back when your life was spent under the watch of a puppet-master’s sword and the bright, hot Houston sky.

 

* * *

 

It feels good to care about someone else; someone new.

 

 

 

 


	4. Fourteen (2)

     You are fourteen and four months old--you know this, of course, without needing to consult any kind of calendar like the ones Rose has drawn up; it’s more of a curse than a blessing--and it has been a little over a year since you arrived on this meteor. You are a little over one-third of the way through your trip. One third done. One third.

      It has also been roughly five months since the last time you and Terezi spoke more than in passing. This would be quite a feat, considering there are only eight people here, but the more you explore, the more you know that the structure you’re all inhabiting was also clearly meant for a number possibly in the hundreds. There are rooms and platforms you’ve stumbled into that you’re pretty sure no one else has entered yet; you’re fairly certain that’s how Gamzee has gone this entire year without showing himself much. That’s not even to mention the dreambubbles, which are vast and aren’t even bound by any laws of physics the game enforces.

      Still, it’s been five months since you last spoke to Terezi, and you didn’t really mean for it to go on that long. Now that it has, you don’t know how to start speaking to her again.

      You know that almost everyone is getting annoyed with you over this--most of them bring it up in the sort of gentle, non-confrontational tones that you know mean they think you’re emotionally fragile, like you’ll fall right back into that apathetic spiral at the slightest provocation. It’s kind of pissing you off.

      You don’t expect the first person to actually confront you about it to be Vriska.

      “I know you hate me,” Vriska says, by way of greeting, after cornering you on your way out of Can Town, “but that doesn’t mean you need to take it out on Terezi. This has gone on way past the point of reasonable, Dave.”

      “I don’t hate you,” you respond, too surprised to say anything else. A new tangle of shame forms in your gut at the thought that you’ve let it get to the point that Vriska is lecturing you on what’s reasonable. “I just--you know what, I’m not even going to go into it because it’s a lost cause with you. Just step back a little, you’re making me claustrophobic, Jesus.”

      Vriska does step back, saying, “Whatever, but my point still stands. Put on your big wiggler pants and do something about this huge, stupid mess that doesn’t even need to be a mess!”

      “Does Terezi even want to talk to me?”

      “What do you think?”

      “I don’t know,” you say. You’re getting flustered, which is not a state of being you like to be in. “Does every conversation need to be this fucking difficult with you? You’re her moirail, that’s why I’m asking.”

      “Does every conversation need to be a needy circlejerk with you?” Vriska says, rolling her eyes. “Do you think I would have come allllllll the way down here to have a nice discussion with you if I didn’t think Terezi wanted to talk? Just do something about it, god. It’s getting beyond tiresome with you two, and Terezi’s sad over your pathetic little face when she didn’t even do anything wrong.”

      You think about this. “No,” you say. “I mean, yeah. You’re right.”

      Vriska looks at you with her expression genuinely shocked for just a moment. “Well, thank you!”

      You watch her walk away, feeling rooted to the spot. Karkat and the Mayor peer around the corner.

      “I’m gonna do it,” you tell Karkat’s wide-eyed stare. “I’m gonna make this happen.”

 

* * *

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering gallowsCalibrator [CG] --

 

TG: so

TG: uh

TG: hey

GC: ...H3Y

TG: can we talk

TG: i mean i know were talking right now which is pretty cool i guess after all this time haha

TG: fuck

TG: why the fuck did i write haha im not laughing and i dont think this is funny i just

TG: do me a solid and forget i was just even more of a monumental douche

TG: and lets go back to the part where i ask if maybe we can talk in person

GC: SUR3

TG: sure

GC: Y3S

GC: 1 4M GO1NG UP TO ON3 OF TH3 OBS3RV4T1ON D3CKS

 

\-- gallowsCalibrator [GC] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

TG: well alright then

* * *

 

      There are several observation decks that you know of here, having gone up to a few yourself to spend some time being lonely and tragic, and of course Terezi is on none of them. After a while you get fed up with this, give in, and resort to flying around close to the meteor like a bright red horse’s ass until you spot her.

      “This is suitably dramatic, I guess,” is the first thing you say to her when you land, tying right in to your reputation of Tactless-Run-At-The-Mouth Number One Champion. You fight the impulsive urge to point out that she hasn’t strewn any mutilated plush dragon corpses around for effect.

      “Honestly, I just wanted you to have to work a little to find me, if you really wanted to talk,” Terezi says. You had no idea you missed her lilting, sort of abrasive voice that much. “That’s petty of me, but I think I have the right to be a little petty in this instance, don’t you?”

      “Yeah, yeah,” you say.

      “Then you’ve passed the first test,” Terezi says, half-joking, and you grit your teeth.

      “Let’s not do any more tests,” you suggest. “Let’s just talk.”

      Terezi murmurs, “Okay,” and then waits expectantly. You sigh, and then take another deep breath, because god damn is this difficult.

      “I’m sorry,” you say in a rush, and now that you’ve got that part out the rest flows with relative ease. “I was a complete toolbag. You didn’t actually do anything that warranted my over-the-top assholeish rage quit. I was pissed at Vriska like a little baby and I took it out on you and then didn’t even have the decency to try and fix it until now, Jesus. This sounds so asinine when I say it out loud. I’m just. Fucking sorry about it.”

      Terezi sniffs at you a few times--this fucking troll girl--and then nods in apparent satisfaction. “Apology accepted,” she announces, and then abruptly drops down to sit with her legs dangling over the edge of the platform. In slight shock, you join her.

      “What I want to know,” Terezi says once you’ve scooted into a comfortable position, “is why this took so very long to happen? I mean, I understand when--that whole, thing, with you--” and she waves her arms around a bit in her futile search for the words. You get what she means.

      “I was... worried about you,” she says in a very quiet voice, screwing her face up into one of those sad emoticon expressions she manages to do so well. “But I was also still kind of mad by the time you were up again, and then you didn’t say anything to me, so.”

      You cringe. “I felt too weird about it, or like I’d missed my chance or something since you weren’t talking either, I don’t even know. Seriously, saying this out loud makes me feel like a complete dumbass. Sorry.”

      Terezi says nothing. You watch the distant dreambubbles skirting by for a while in silence, letting it wash over you. You’re relieved that she’s accepted your apology and that you can apparently go on on speaking terms, but you still feel like shit.

      “I said something mean to Vriska, and then I felt like an asshole because she was impressed by it, and then I took it out on you for being friends with her or something equally as mind-numbingly dumb,” you say eventually. “I think I said some pretty shitty things to you. Sorry for that, too.” Terezi shakes her head.

      “I know about Vriska. She tried to smack talk you afterwards, but it didn’t make me feel any better.”

      “Oh,” you say.

      “And I wasn’t mad about the things you said to me,” Terezi goes on, “I was upset because they’re true.”

      “No,” you say, panic rising up, “Look, TZ, I--I was thinking about it and I think I’m still, just, kind of... resentful of some of the things that happened, when we first played the game.” You swallow the sudden lump in your throat. “Between me and you, yeah, but other people too. And that’s not--I can’t say that something’s fine and then go on being secretly mad about it, that’s unfair and also incredibly stupid. I get it now. But I think you’re--I think we’re all, or most of us, trying really hard to be better people while we’re stuck on this shitty rock,” the last part comes out as more of a yell than you intended, and you pause while it echoes. “So. When I said I wanted to be your friend, I meant that, the way you are. So. Yeah.” You sound like such a tool.

      “I am trying!” Terezi says, her voice uncharacteristically rough, and you mentally punch yourself square in the face. “I’m trying to at least live up to whatever my future self wanted--And Vriska is too! I know--I know you probably don’t believe that.”

      You do, actually. “She cares about you,” is all you can think to say, and then Terezi starts crying. Fuck.

      “I’m supposed to be her moirail,” she hiccups, “I’m supposed to keep her from doing things like--starting up fights with you--”

      “Whoa,” you say, because this is going down a path you remember from the days of chat logs and coin flips, “you can’t control what other people do. Even if you’re the best moirails that ever moirailed. You’re not responsible for Vriska.”

      “I know,” Terezi sighs, sniffing, “I know.”

      She calms herself down, to your great relief. You think, _why the hell not_ , and slide off your shades to better appreciate the sky view.

      “That was extremely emotional,” Terezi says at long last.

      “We’re teens, or like, whatever the troll equivalent of hormone-addled not-quite-kids-not-yet-adults is,” you say by way of explanation. Though it’s pretty ridiculous that this is the most emotionally-fraught conversation you’ve ever had with Terezi, considering your history.

      Terezi sighs, “I don’t want to do this again. I can’t smell anything. I can’t smell the view,” which answers a question you managed to restrain yourself from asking. Terezi reaches for your cape to wipe across her face before you can even raise a protest. “I heard you take your shades off earlier, and I can’t even smell your eyes.”

      The knot you’d been holding in your stomach for the past several months untangles itself. “I missed these really fucking weird conversations,” you admit.

* * *

      Much of the tension on the meteor dissipates after you make up with Terezi, which kind of makes you feel like a jerk for not doing it sooner, but you’re relieved all the same. Even Vriska stops grating on your nerves (though you can’t be certain whether she’s behaving differently or whether you’ve just stopped caring).

      Karkat has a mental breakdown over some kind of grub loaf he ruined for his shared meal night. You console him by assuring him you wouldn’t have eaten grub loaf anyway.

      “Let’s watch a shitty movie,” you suggest when he refuses to be consoled. “Yo, look--I have Good Luck Chuck. This one is at least twelve kinds of terrible. You’ll love it.”

      “Is it romantic comedy?” Karkat asks, squinting suspiciously at the cover.

      You set up the husktop and hunker down on the couch to watch it, and... it is the first time in these months of movie bro time that you feel palpably, horrifically awkward while watching a movie with him.

      You’ve seen movie sex scenes ranging from the shockingly explicit to the tenderest of embraces in both human and troll varieties by now, so the amount of sex in this particular film shouldn’t be affecting you the way it is, but you are suddenly hyper-aware of the fact that Karkat is sitting right next to you, and how in this context it doesn’t feel like you’re two good bros hanging out but more like something else entirely, and it’s... It’s.

      Lucky for you, Karkat launches right into a speech about how troll relationship quadrants would have fit into the storyline better as soon as the credits start rolling, and you have several long minutes to hum and nod and work out a way to calm you racing heart.

 

* * *

 

      You decide later that it’s because you’re fourteen and you’re at the age where literally anything can seem sexual to you, right? Vriska could probably recite math problems and you’d pop a boner. Right?

      Staring at the cover of Good Luck Chuck, you remember, unbidden, that time at age 12 when you saw a boy band poster on a street corner and stared at it for longer than was strictly necessary.

* * *

       Terezi doesn’t return to Can Town, claiming that Karkat has succeeded her role there too admirably, but you do find time to hang out back on the observation decks when she’s not with Vriska (which is, admittedly, most of the time).

      “On Alternia, we had a game called ‘The Player Presents Two True Statements of a Personal Nature and One False Statement, and the Other Players Must Guess Which Statement is False,” Terezi announces, laying face-up with her pointy limbs splayed. You join her, making a pillow of your hands.

      “‘Two Truths and a Lie’? We had that on Earth.”

      “Was potentially fatal injury a repercussion for an incorrect guess?” Terezi asks.

      “No, girl,” you say.

      “That’s nowhere near as fun,” Terezi says, “but we’ll play it your way.”

      “I think this is probably more of a group activity--”

      “One,” Terezi interrupts, “My least favorite chalk color is white; Two, my favorite scalemate is Senator Lemonsnout; and Three, I once fell out of my treehouse.”

      You scoff. “That was way too easy, TZ. I know you fuckin’ hate Lemonsnout.”

      Terezi cackles. “Your turn!”

      “Okay,” you say, scouring your brain for something you haven’t already broadcasted to the entire meteor crew. “Uh. One, I used to wear a shirt with a heart on it; Two, I... fuck.”

      “You’re bad at this,” Terezi laughs.

      “Hold up, just gimme a second. Two, Two... I learned to mix sick beats when I was ten.”

      “And three?” Terezi prompts, because you’ve gone silent. You’ve just remembered the exact day you got your turntables, and the mix of feelings it’s brought up isn’t quite what you expected.

      “Three,” you repeat, “I had a happy childhood.”

      “Ah, coolkid,” Terezi sighs, reaching one hand up toward the lights as if she could touch them. “That one’s easy, too.”

* * *

 

      You remember the nervousness pounding in your chest when you first showed your Bro your new webcomic; how he sat hunched in front of the computer, his expression and posture giving you no clues.

      "It's good," he'd said at last, and then, without even a smile (let alone a laugh): "It's very funny."

      The thing is, even now you want to believe he was being sincere.

* * *

 

      Karkat plops down beside you with a an extremely determined set to his shoulders, and says, “Okay, let’s do this.”

      “Dude, I’m just gonna show you how to use my turntables,” you say, plugging said turntables into your computer. “We’re not marching off to the front lines, here. At least not yet. You look like Kankri.”

      “Don’t you fucking bring my ancestor into this,” Karkat grunts, shuddering.

      You laugh way too loud, the way you’ve started to notice you do whenever he does something you find funny.

      Your hands touch occasionally as you teach him the basics.  You very carefully do not think about it.

* * *

 

      “If John or Jade were here to help with these group meals,” Rose asks as she pokes at what is supposed to be some kind of pasta, “what do you think they would make?”

      “The only thing I can say with one-hundred-percent certainty is that John would not make a cake,” you answer.

      “Mmm.”

      “I don’t know what Jade would make. Dog food?”

      Rose makes a face. “Jade did not eat dog food, Dave.”

      “I know, but her guardian was literally a dog,” you counter. “And she is also now, like, fairly literally a dog. Right?”

      “I’m... not sure that’s how it works,” Rose says. “I hope not. What do you think about adding some kind of wine to our turns at dinner?”

      “We’re fourteen years old,” is your wary answer, and Rose hums again.

      Among everything you’ve permanently lost--your home, half your family, all your preconceived ideas about who you were and who you should be, your entire goddamn planet and everything you’ve ever known--missing John and Jade ranks pretty high up there on the sad scale, and that's even with knowing you’re going to see them again. You wonder if they’ll still like you the same.

      A year and a half to go.


	5. Fourteen (3)

      You’re two months away from fifteen, and  it’s been three times as long since the last time Rose took an alchemized hair clipper and unsteady hand to your head. Everyone’s hair grows too-long and scraggly. One day Kanaya strolls by with a new, beautifully coiffed short ‘do, and you practically beg her on bended knee to cut your hair as well when she says she did it herself.

      (“I also cut my own hair,” Terezi informs you. This explains a lot).

      Kanaya asks you to take off your shades before she can cut your hair, and you do it with only the slightest bit of nervousness.

      “Why do you wear those?” Kanaya asks.

      “Irony. And light sensitivity,” you say, which is true enough—though the light on the meteor, other than Rose's sun-lamps, is so dim that it shouldn’t make a difference.

      Kanaya works efficiently. With her fingers threading through the hair on the back of your neck, you sigh, “I can see why Rose likes hanging out with you. It’s too bad you’re a lesbian.”

      Kanaya’s hands still, and immediately the foot-in-mouth siren--which is a fairly new addition when compared to your general lifespan--starts blaring in your mind.

      “Uh,” you say, “welp. Allright. That was not supposed to leave my brain but apparently I said that, and now that I said it out loud, it was probably presumptuous as hell, sorry. I guess I don’t really know you well enough to make a judgment call like that? I mean, are you a lesbian? Or like. I’m just gonna stop talking.”

      Kanaya moves around to your front and adjusts more hair. She doesn’t, to your relief, look angry--but she does have a spark of amusement in the curve of her mouth. “I am not offended. I’m just not terribly familiar with that word,” she says. “So, perhaps I simply don’t know enough yet to be offended. I’m assuming it has something to do with the strange human propensity for labeling?”

      “It’s, uh, when you’re a girl who only likes other girls,” you say. At her blank look, you go on, “If you’re a girl who only wants to bang other girls. Uh, or--you only want other girls in your romancey... red quandrants.”

      “Oh,” Kanaya says, her face lighting up a bit. She pulls a comb from somewhere and takes it gently to the top of your head. “I suppose that describes me. We do not have a word for that on Alternia. I simply assumed I was very particular with my romantic inclinations.”

      “Yeah,” you say, because you still feel like a goddamn horse’s ass and now you don’t know what else to do.

      “Still, though,” Kanaya says, stepping back to allow you to see yourself in the mirror. You look fucking fantastic. “Your comment was awfully presumptuous in that you assumed I’d want you as a romantic partner were my preferences different.”

      She’s staring you down in the mirror, still with that trace of faint amusement, and there is a strange mixture of abject terror and desire swirling around in your gut. You swallow.

      “I have a problem,” is all you can say.

      Kanaya smiles at you. It's as terrifying as Terezi's, though not as wide. "We know," she says, laughing faintly.

 

* * *

 

      Karkat tells you about his life on Alternia, and his mutant blood.

      "That's bullshit," you say, a little too loudly, after he explains he probably would have been culled for it were he ever found out.

      "Well--yeah," he says, sounding surprised at your reaction, and embarrassment floods your belly. "I thought it was awful too, but that's how it was. Not that it matters anymore."

      “That’s still complete bullshit,” you say, propelled by the force of your embarrassment to keep going. You imagine Karkat growing up, imagine him as a little kid--maybe with, like, extra grub arms or whatever the fuck trolls had, and he probably already had bags under his eyes but at that age they would’ve looked adorable--you imagine Karkat growing up with that kind of hopeless knowledge. “They would’ve what--culled you, straight-up murdered you before anyone could have the chance to see what you could do? No offense, but just from all the stupid shit I’ve seen and heard about, it’s not like blood color means a damn thing when it comes to what kind of person you’ll be. And even if you grew up to be useless, which you wouldn’t have, nobody deserves to die for that. Alternia fucking sucked.”

      You are more riled up than you expected to be.

      You imagine how Karkat must have felt when he started making friends online. The expression of the Karkat in your imagination looks very similar to the expressions you think you would have made if you hadn’t been so obsessed with keeping a poker face.

      Karkat looks at you for a second with wide eyes and a seriously furrowed brow. Then he shoves you.

     “What?” you exclaim. Your sunglasses are slightly askew.

     “Why do you have to be such a goddamn decent person?” Karkat shouts.  “You’re so fucking--ugh! I want to be mad at you for insulting my goddamn home when you’ve never even been there--”

      “You just got done telling me how much it sucked!”

      Karkat shoves you again, not as hard.  His face is screwed up with some emotion you can’t define, and his ears have gone red. “I’m not done, you stupid--I wanted you to stay an irredeemable asshole. I didn’t want you to be my best friend!”

     “Well I didn’t want to be yours, either, assclown!” you shout back, finally righting your shades. “But it’s too late now! Jesus fuck.”

     “Yeah,” Karkat says, breathing heavily through his nose. “Too late now.”

     Then he starts laughing. You see it bubble up from his throat; how he tries to control it for only a second before giving in.

     You join in after shoving him back for good measure, steadily ignoring the memory of how his hands felt on your shoulders, and wondering if he ever laughed this much before the game upended his life. Probably not. You sure didn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

      Rose sits down primly beside you, slides around to face you, and carefully pulls the headphones from your ears.

      “Did you or did you not,” she says, talking right over your ‘sup’, “awkwardly hit on Kanaya the last time she cut your hair, and then tell her that she is a lesbian?”

      “I,” you say.

      “Dave,” says Rose.

      “It’s not like I planned for that to happen,” you plead, and Rose groans and grabs you by the shoulders like she’s depending on them to stay upright.

      “Dave,” she says again, shaking you a little.

      “You know I don’t have a filter,” you say, attempting to shrug her off. “You know shit just spews from my mouth like some sort of uncontrollable garbage hose of embarrassing teen filth. You _know_ this about me.”

      Rose has ducked her head beneath her shoulders, and she leans into you dramatically. “I had hoped for just this one thing,” she moans, “just this _one thing_ to come out perfectly, or as close to perfectly as possible. I had hoped for this one thing to not circumnavigate this meteor--and, indeed, the entire revolving course of my unlucky life--and relate back to you in some disturbingly incestual way.”

      That’s a little worrying. “What the fuck happened? I mean, I’m sorry I let my yap and apparently my buried sexual attraction to every goddamn person here go off,” you say, immediately regretting that last bit and hoping to christ that she doesn’t think too hard about it.

      Rose sighs, long and theatrical, and then hoists herself back up into a prim posture in her chair. “I asked Kanaya on a date,” she announces quietly.

      You give her the manliest, most excited bro-arm-punch you think you have ever given. “You did? Fuck yeah, about time!”

      Rose rubs at her arm, giving you a single, elegantly raised eyebrow. “No. I had this planned, Dave. There was a very specific way to go about it and instead I let myself be flustered by her retelling of your--your imbecilic day-to-day interactions, and I _word-vomited_ my request all over her before I could think better of it.”

      “What did she say?”

      “Yes,” Rose says, “but that’s not the point--”

      You bro-punch her arm again in the same spot. Rose swears. “Yeah! You’ve been hanging out long enough already, somebody had to get the ball rolling. Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

      There is a dark flush high in Rose’s cheeks. Her face battles for a moment between expressions of determined pissyness and amusement, before giving into a smile. She bro-punches you back, then darts around to the other side of the table as you swear, laughing breathlessly. You make a show of attempting to reach for her, then giving up and flopping bonelessly onto the table.

      “I’ll be adding the quip about repressed sexual attraction to your personal file,” Rose says. “That will be your penance for embarrassing the hell out of me.”

      “In front of your teen crush?”

      “Yes.”

      “I thought we were friends,” you say, your voice muffled from where your chin is resting between your arms on the tabletop. Rose looks at you for one long, inscrutable moment. Then she leans over the table--she has to practically pull her entire body over to do it--and plants an exaggerated kiss on your forehead.

      “We are best friends,” she says seriously, and then laughs, pointing at your forehead. “Enjoy your new look.”

      “Everyone’s gonna be jealous,” you tell her.

 

 

      You walk around for the entire day with Rose’s purple-black lipstick on your forehead. When Terezi notices, she howls with laughter so loudly that you almost get defensive, wondering whether this means something totally different in Troll-land. She insists on adding to the look.

      “I ain’t letting your razor-blade mouth anywhere near me,” you tell her, because there is actually still a part of you that would indeed like her razor-blade mouth near you, and you don’t want to encourage it.

      “I don’t like lipstick, anyway. I’ll have Vriska do it!”

      “No,” you and Vriska say in unison. Spider-woman gives you a sideways look as though offended.

      “Then we’ll draw it in chalk and wet it to press it onto your face,” Terezi says.

      “As long as you use water and not spit,” you concede. “I mean, if you can get the mayor to donate some chalk to the cause.”

      The mayor is surprisingly willing--god bless this guy--and half an hour later you are sporting an additional poorly-drawn teal kiss, a reluctant blue kiss, and a weird purple kiss that you really wish Terezi hadn’t drawn. The mayor is halfway through drawing a bright red pair of lips when Karkat walks in.

      “I know how to get the ladies,” is all you say to his look of faint horror. The mayor takes this opportunity to slap a wet piece of paper to your cheek, peeling it away to reveal something resembling a red lipstick stain.

      Karkat flushes impressively and walks right back out. The mayor gives Terezi a high-five.

      You try not to think about how your face is suddenly hot, too.

 

* * *

 

 

      You decline Rose’s more and more frequent offers to drink with her. You’re still put off by the last (and only time) you drank with her, during which you’re pretty sure you giggled too much and told Rose you loved her at least eight times. It took you the entire following day to recover.

 

* * *

 

      “Why are so many of your human romances only between men and women?” Karkat says after one of your movie nights, flipping the DVD box around and scanning it in obvious frustration. “It’s so limiting. Half these people had better chemistry with fucking side characters, but all that potential gets shafted to serve the purpose of making absolutely sure the man gets with the woman? I mean, what the actual fuck?”

      “You’re seeing it through a troll lense, dude,” you say. “And also, a weirdly obsessive romantic-comedy-critical lense. This isn’t even a romantic movie.”

      Karkat looks offended. You throw a piece of popcorn at his ear.

      “Most humans wanna get with the opposite sex, so that’s what the movies do. I mean, I guess I actually didn’t live long enough on earth to know that for sure. I guess lots of people felt pressured to live up to that, and all our like, performative gender roles and stuff. If you’re a dude you’re supposed to like this and do that and if you’re a girl you like and do something else, blah blah.”

      “No offense,” Karkat says, “but that’s a lot of bullshit.”

      “Yeah,” you agree, wondering why on earth you’ve suddenly decided to run at the mouth about this particular topic.

      You watch more of the movie, and then Karkat pauses it at the moment when the two protagonists are about to embrace. “See! Why would she want to kiss this guy she presumably just met when there’s so much unresolved tension between her and her best friend? You’re seriously telling me most humans are like this?”

      “I’m pretty sure Rose isn’t, since she’s going on date with Kanaya,” you tell him, thinking after you’ve said it that you’re not sure she would want you to broadcast that news, but whoops, too late. “I might not be.”

      And, fuck, you’re not sure what made you say that.

      Karkat’s looking at you sideways. “You’re not sure?”

      “I--no,” you say, and you can feel your face heating up like a furnace. “I’m--I don’t know. It’s a lot to figure out.”

      “Huh,” is all Karkat says, reaching forward slowly to unpause the movie.

 

* * *

 

     You don’t really like the dreambubbles.

    Luckily, you don’t always enter them when you sleep--you prefer actual dreams, even nightmares--but it’s impossible to predict whether or not you will when you close your eyes. If the meteor passes through one, like today, then there’s not much anyone can do but deal and hope for the best.

     You'd expected your apartment appearing in a dreambubble to bring about--if not a sense of comfort or safety--at least the feeling of calm familiarity. But instead you stand stock-still in the center of the living room with a feeling of apprehension washing over you so acute that you don't want to move.

    Staring at the half-open fridge filled to actual bursting with weapons and nothing edible, something about all those thoughts you’ve been having finally clicks.

    You hear a sharp cry and a muffled curse from the bathroom. This snaps you out of it enough to go and investigate.

    “This is your hive?” Karkat grumbles when you unearth him from a fallen pile of more shitty swords and creepy puppets. “That fucking figures. What kind of depraved lunatic keeps puppets in the ablution block?”

    He doesn’t mention the swords, which makes you wonder if it was a regular thing for trolls to keep weapons in their showers. “My Bro,” is all you say, leading him silently back into the living room.

    There are words bubbling up behind your teeth, but you suddenly can’t remember how to form them on your lips. Every other day you talk yourself into a hole with all the garbage that comes spilling from your mouth.

    On the roof somewhere, you can hear Terezi and someone else shrieking at the crows.

    "Are you okay?" Karkat asks at length.

    “Yeah,” you say, tearing your gaze away from the posters lining the walls. “Come on, let’s grab Terezi and whoever the fuck else is in this bubble and I’ll show you my old room. I have some sweet dead things in jars.”

 

* * *

 

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT]  --

 

TG: rose

TG: someone cant be "abused" if like

TG: the person who supposedly did those things also bought them birthday presents right

TG: even if they were shitty or kinda creepy and meant to be “ironic”

TG: and like

TT: Dave.

TG: brought them to the emergency room when they were hella sick even though we didnt have the money for that shit at the time

TG: i mean im pretty sure those fucking puppet porn websites started raking in the cash just before we destroyed the earth but we were broke as shit before then

TT: Dave

TG: and he probably was working towards making sure i at least knew enough about fighting to not die pathetically in the first five minutes of the game

TT: Dave, I really can't answer that for you, unfortunately.

TT: I can say that I wouldn't be surprised if that's the conclusion you've come to.

TG: this is doing the opposite of helping me

TT: I would also say that people are rarely very black and white, and one can still love someone who does horrible things to them.

TG: ok thanks

TG: god

TT: Dave?

TT: Are you there?

TG: yeah i

TG: lets just forget we talked about this ok

TT: Dave, why don’t you come over to my room? Or I can come over to yours.

TT: Dave?

TG: yeah im coming

 

     You wish you could have the same revelatory change of heart about your guardian as Rose seems to have had. You think maybe you actually have, just not in the direction you would have liked.

    “I mean, I don’t know whether he cared about me,” you say when Rose asks. She looks at you with way too much pity from her supine position on the bed, which is the entire reason you didn’t just answer honestly and say that you’re pretty sure he had zero feeling for you whatsoever. Just to wipe the look off her face, you go on, “He was just, like, super narcissistic? And a shitty parent.”

    “Which is perhaps why he deliberately chose not to be addressed as one,” Rose says, which just puts you in a worse mood. You sit there in silence at the foot of her bed, messing around with songs on your ipod without even trying to track down the earbuds.

    “Come have a drink with me,” Rose says after a good hour of letting you sulk in companionable silence. She sits up sharply, accidentally knocking the back of your head with her elbow.

    “I’m tired,” you tell her, which has become your go-to excuse. “Isn’t your date tonight?”

    Rose makes a noise to the affirmative. “I’m trying to bolster up my courage.”

    “What, by getting sloshed?”

    “No,” Rose says, rolling her eyes. She slides her legs off her bed and stands, stretching, as she reaches for one of her cabinets. “I’m just helping myself along a little. I’d be far too nervous otherwise. You should really try it again.”

    “You and Kanaya have been bosom buddies for like, a year and a half now. What’s there to worry about? And I feel like the fact that you keep telling me to try it and I keep saying no should tell you something. Jesus, am I your psychiatrist now?”

      “As though you could compete with my prowess,” Rose laughs. “If you’re not going to join me, then could you at least do me the favor of not chiding me for the choices I make regarding my own mental and physical well-being?”   

    You think about the time Rose wouldn’t speak to you for a month, and the time she jammed herself back into your life when you almost did the same. You think about the Rose who was willing to sacrifice herself for her friends, the Rose who took your hand with shaking fingers as the countdown neared zero and, at the last second, smiled.

    “Sometimes you’ve gotta do things that scare you,” you say.

    Rose turns, flask in hand. She laughs once, darkly. “Like you?”

    A vicious heat spreads from your stomach to your ears. You say nothing as you leave.

    By the time she joins you and Karkat in the common room that evening, dressed to the nines and smiling, most of your hurt feelings have been buried. Still--when Vriska slaps Rose’s glass to the ground, in the moment before you see Rose’s face crumble, you stare at Vriska and like her very intensely for just a moment.

 

* * *

 

      Despite your best efforts to push it from your mind, thinking about your Bro consumes you so much that you avoid interacting heavily with everyone for two days by claiming illness. Everyone is more or less happy to accept this, as the last time a bug spread around the meteor it was Not Good News. You think Rose probably knows what’s really going on, but is either too embarrassed about the last time you interacted to say anything, or she’s trying to give you space.

      On the second day, Karkat sends you a link to some kind of .mov file. You open it to find the most horrifically eighties-looking saxophone movie intro you have ever seen (or heard). Somehow the fact that trolls have saxophones doesn’t surprise you.

 

 

TG: dude what is this piece of shit you just sent me

CG: TO PUT IT IN YOUR HUMAN TERMS:

CG: IT’S A FUCKING LOVE STORY, DAVE.

TG: yeah i figured

TG: its

TG: i mean i am actually at a loss for words right now watching this

TG: part of me wants to embrace this as a pure distilled example of overwraught sreeching music and shitty fairy light effects

TG: its impressive really

CG: IT’S A CLASSIC, YOU UNEDUCATED ASS. AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, IT DOESN’T FALL PREY TO THE RIDICULOUS GENDER-RELATED TROPES YOUR HUMAN MOVIES DO, MAKING IT FAR SUPERIOR TO ANYTHING YOU WOULD HAVE SELECTED.

CG: YOU OBVIOUSLY WON’T BE WATCHING THIS IN PERSON TONIGHT SO I THOUGHT I’D MAKE SURE WE DON’T GO OFF SCHEDULE BY SENDING IT TO YOU MYSELF. YOURE WELCOME.

TG: shit thats right

TG: sorry dude

CG: YOU CAN APPEASE MY OBVIOUSLY VERY WOUNDED WIGGLER FEELINGS BY WATCHING THE MOVIE, “BRO”.

CG: THAT WAS SARCASM BY THE WAY.

TG: yeah I got that

 

      Karkat logs off with only a few more admonitions to actually watch the film, and you feel guilty enough about missing your unofficial movie night to promise that you will.

      You get halfway through before falling asleep, feeling pleasantly warm.

 

* * *

 

      It makes a difference, you think, getting close to people, making friends. It doesn't make everything better, but it helps.


	6. Fifteen (1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for panic/anxiety this chapter.

      Your mood gradually returns to normal. A month later you turn fifteen with, luckily, little fanfare. In honor of your birthday, the mayor names the Can Town Recording Studio after you, which is probably the best thing that has ever happened in your life.

      Four days later, while purposely intruding on Rose and Kanaya’s “cultural exchange” time for no other reason than being obnoxious, you notice from across the common room that Karkat’s shirt has gotten a bit too small for him. You notice he has nice shoulders.

      The day after that, while mixing beats, you notice the nice lines of his jaw and neck while he’s turned slightly away from you.

      The week after that, while drawing with Terezi, is the first time you actively notice that you have, in fact, been staring at Karkat the way you sometimes stare at hot girls on what's left of the internet. A fundamental understanding of a piece of yourself--the one that’s been floating around your head, just out of reach of your willingness to accept it--slides into place.

      “Dave, am I supposed to be contributing to this conversation, or are you just talking to yourself again?”

      You turn your head slowly towards Terezi, who is managing to make the >:? face in that weird way she does.

     “Just talking to myself,” you tell her hollowly. She shrugs, and draws a jagged, misplaced line through your shitty sketch of the Mayor skateboarding.

      You want to go stare at yourself in a mirror for a while, but you have the sneaking suspicion that would live up to too many unwritten cliches.

 

* * *

 

      The thing is, a part of you always thought your first kiss would be with Jade.

      You guess it was, but you weren’t exactly alive enough to experience it first hand. Terezi came after that, which was pretty great in the moment, but then she shattered all hopes of future mouth-to-mouth immediately after. So you had gone on assuming that your next conscious kiss would probably be with Jade. You’d always told yourself you’d harbored a little crush on her ever since you first saw her picture, but the truth is you’d liked her almost since you first started talking online.

      You miss her terribly, but you’re not sure your feelings swing that way anymore. You’re not sure you’re ready for her to see all the not so great parts of you this game has dredged up. You’re not sure how to take her down from the--small, but still there--pedestal that 13-year-old Dave put her on.

      Still--you’ve lived with the assumption that you want to kiss Jade for so long that it is wigging you out a little to fully realize that you really, almost to the point of embarrassment, want your next kiss to be with Karkat. Not only with a dude, but with an alien dude who used to piss you off and is now your best friend.

      You want your next kiss to be with Karkat. And the one after that. And the one after that...

      You do, in fact, end up staring at yourself dramatically in a mirror. Terezi finds you seemingly by smell alone, and, silently, grabs at your face (standing on tip-toe) until she can pull your shades off, which is something that hardly bothers you anymore. She swaps them with her own red-tinted monstrosity of a pair, and joins you in staring straight at the mirror, your shades way too large on her pointed face.

      “Well, girl,” you say, “I know you can’t see this, but we look pretty damn sexy.”

      “We smell delicious,” Terezi says, slapping you hard on the back.

* * *

 

      You have the good old sexuality talk with Karkat, months after your first mention of it--because of course. Of _course_ you would decide to have a blatant talk about your ongoing sexuality crisis with the dude who made you realize you were having a sexuality crisis in the first place.

      “So, what are you saying, here?” Karkat says. “You’re definitely attracted to guys? You said that you might be ‘like that’ before. So what?”

      You would really, really like to run off somewhere and hide, but Karkat is just looking at you, and that’s the worst—

      “Look, it’s,” you start, haltingly, “I know this stuff’s no big deal for you guys, but for humans it’s, I mean, I guess I can’t actually speak for the _entirety of the human race_ or whatever, but at least where I come from, which could be a pretty stifling place in more ways than one, not to mention—“

      “You’re rambling,” Karkat points out, and you clam up.

      “Fuck,” Karkat says after a moment, “I didn’t mean to cut you off, you can keep—saying whatever you were going to say—I mean, I’m here, to listen,” and he grabs a pillow and settles down with it, giving you that intent stare that means he’s trying to do the moirail-y thing again, and that makes something cold drop into your stomach for reasons you understand but are too scared to admit to, just yet.

      “Humans are supposed to be attracted to the opposite sex, since that’s how we’re supposed to reproduce,” you say, clinically. “Like I told you before, supposedly most humans are like that naturally, so it’s no big, but if you’re not, you’re kind of… I don’t know. I’m supposed to be attracted to girls, and that’s it. At least, that’s what was kind of pushed on me, growing up.”

      “That’s messed up,” Karkat announces.

      “Yeah,” you say, for lack of anything else.

      There’s a short moment of silence, then Karkat says, “What about Rose? You didn’t seem shocked or disgusted or anything when she started dating Kanaya.”

      “I—no, I wasn’t,” you say, your heartbeat gradually slowing. You feel a sudden swell of defensiveness. “I’m not a bigot. Rose has the right to feel and do whatever she wants.”

      “Okay,” Karkat says, in that soft placating tone you’ve grown used to, recently. “So if that’s what you think about how other people live, then why don’t you think it applies to you?”

      You open your mouth, but you have nothing to say to that, so you make a weird sort of sighing noise and close it again.

      “Yeah,” Karkat says.

      And you get it—you get what he’s saying, and you think about all the times you’ve encountered gay dudes or various same-sex or who-the-hell knows couples and not actually given a fuck about it, but it’s _different_ when it’s you. And you also think about all those jokes you’ve made with John over the years and how ingrained it’s been to shout “no homo” or face the crippling realization that you’re not normal, here’s one more thing on the massive checklist of _Normal Life Things That Dave Strider Cannot Have;_ Hey, Dave, in addition to having a completely fucking batshit crazy guardian and a childhood fraught with anxiety and neglect, and being an unwilling player in a game that ended the fucking world, it turns out you’re also set apart from the majority of the billions of other people who have existed in yet another way, because it turns out you like dudes!

      Your eyes have started burning behind your shades and you don’t want to reach up to rub them, because then he’ll see, so you let your head fall down towards your knees and brace your hands behind your neck.

      “I, uh,” Karkat says, suddenly awkward. You can hear him abandoning the pillow and shuffling a bit closer to you. “I didn’t realize this was such a big deal to you.”

      You don’t say anything, and after a second you can feel Karkat’s tentative hand on your shoulder.

      You like him so much it’s started to hurt, and you wish very badly that you could do something about it, but trepidation has you frozen.

* * *

 

      Vriska, Terezi, and Rose have been plotting. You know this because you have been following them around  in a bout of weird anxiety that Terezi and Rose don’t like you anymore.

      “If you were actually willing to use your god tier powers then maybe you could join us,” Vriska finally says with an eye roll. “Otherwise, stop complaining. Though I don’t actually know what good time powers would do at this point.”

      “Thanks,” you say.

 

* * *

 

      “I’m worried about Terezi,” Karkat tells you by way of greeting one day. He's carrying about four thick, leather-bound novels under one arm.

      "She's just making, like, serious endgame plans with Rose and Vriska," you say, turning back to your cotton-ball sheep. Can Town was recently hit by a tragic plague-slash-disaster dubbed 'Karkat's Clumsy Foot,' and you need to make more stat. "She'll be fine."

      "I know that, and I also know that I was very pointedly not fucking invited," Karkat sniffs. "That's not what I mean. She doesn’t seem herself.”

      “Doesn’t she?” you say. “I mean, most of our interactions these days aren’t deep since she and Vriska are fucking glued at the hip, so I guess I wouldn’t know.”

      “You do realize people have been saying that about us, too,” Karkat says, and you decline to comment. “Anyway, she won’t really talk to me about it.”

      “What makes you think she’ll talk to me?” you say. “Why does she need to talk to anyone? Isn’t the point of her having Vriska as a moirail so Terezi can talk to her about this shit?”

      Karkat gives you a very hard look. “Once again you completely fail to grasp the nuances of troll culture. Don’t be a douchecanoe.”

      You think, _good one_ , and Karkat snorts, which means you've said it out loud again.

* * *

 

      Still, now that Karkat’s brought it up, you see what he means. Terezi has been as weird as you’ve come to expect, but there’s an edge of performance to it. She’s quieter when she seems to think you don’t need anything from her.

      You ask her to visit Can Town one day, which has grown sprawling and beautiful. You hug the mayor when you walk in, which has become your usual greeting.

      “Do you ever leave this room?” Terezi asks him. The mayor waves his arms.

      “Don’t judge,” you tell her. “And he does, in fact, walk around the meteor like the rest of us. He’s just extremely dedicated to his town.”

      “I can respect that,” Terezi says, kneeling down next to Strider’s Biznasty Recording Studio. “This all sure has gotten bigger since last time I was here!”

      You give her the grand tour; then, with apologies to the Mayor, walk with her up to your usual place on one of the observation decks.

      “So,” you say once you arrive, “Karkat says he doesn’t think you’re acting like your usual self.”

      Terezi groans. “I don’t know why Karkat thinks this is any of his business.”

      “He’s your friend, isn’t he?” you say. “I mean, longer than I’ve been. And I kind of agree.”

      “You’re both terrible,” Terezi says. Then, easier than you expected, “Fine. Gamzee made a blackrom pass at me.”

      You choke on your own spit with how sharply you gasp in surprise. Terezi pounds you on the back with one fist. “Jesus,” you say eventually, coughing. “Is that where he’s been all this time? Following you around?”

      Terezi’s face has scrunched up. “I think that was only happening for the past few months. Vriska helped me shut that possible future down.”

      “Well, thank fuck,” you say. “Can you imagine if you hate-dated a damn juggalo?”

      Terezi just hums, which is a little bit worrying to you, and doesn’t say anything else.

* * *

 

      You can’t sleep, so you try to contact Terezi again later that night.

      “Dave, for fuck’s sake,” Terezi shouts, “stop trying to talk through the little foam ass!”

      “What?” you say.

      She hangs up on you.

* * *

 

      “Dave,” Karkat says, “I appreciate you trying to keep me up to date on this, but I can’t fucking hear you through the little foam ass. Nobody can.”

      “I am not talking to you on the crab speakers,” you yell.

      “What?” Karkat says.

      You hang up on him.

* * *

 

      You bring Terezi’s mood up again the next time the two of you are in the common room. Vriska has taken to talking strategy with Rose alone, which means you’re free to possibly make a (not-foam) ass of yourself in pursuit of figuring out what’s up with your friend.

      “For the last time, I’m fine,” Terezi says pointedly. “There is literally _nothing wrong_. I had one potential problem and Vriska helped me fix it. That’s it.”

      “I have had multiple serious problems since getting stuck on this fucking rock,” you tell her. “One of them involved you. You can’t sit there and tell me you have had zero problems since then.”

      “I’m not as emotionally fragile as you,” Terezi spits.

      “Yes, you are,” you spit back, and a little bit of that old anger rears its head. Terezi has pressed her lips into a very thin line. “At least appreciate the fact that I’m not being needlessly manipulative in trying to get you to face your fucking issues.”

      “Congratulations,” Terezi says.

      “What, does having a moirail mean you’re not allowed to talk to your other friends about your problems?” you say, a bit more aggressively than you’d intended.  “Is Vriska the only person you’re allowed to have actual conversations with?”

      “I don’t have any problems!” Terezi shouts, standing up. “That’s the whole--that’s it! I have no problems! Things are great! I have no idea what in the name of human jesus I actually accomplished in the other timeline because I still feel like _shit_ and there’s no reason for it!”

      She paces a few times, making abortive clawing motions at her own face.

      “That sounds like a problem in itself to me, TZ,” you say. “Just saying.”

      Terezi hits you rather hard in the face with a half-stuffed scalemate. You get up and try to wrestle her to the ground until she gives in, her anger turning to breathless laughter. She wins, of course. You lend her your cape as a prize.

      You’ve got little pinprick cuts on your shoulder from her nails, but it makes you feel strangely satisfied, the way you always do when you’ve managed to make her laugh.

      “Vriska is being a good moirail,” Terezi says, once you’re both sprawled on the ground in exhaustion. Terezi has your cape draped around her shoulders like an overlarge scarf. “I know that’s what you and Karkat are worried about. You don’t know her like I do.”

      That makes you uneasy, but--“That’s true, I guess,” you concede. You stand and, holding out one hand, help her up.

* * *

 

      “Did you score?” is the first thing out of your mouth one night when you enter the kitchen to help Rose with dessert.

      “Dave,” Rose admonishes, wiping a cake tray with butter. Her tone is disapproving, but her mouth has quirked up and she’s got a happy glow in her face that you haven’t seen in a long time.

      “C’mon,” you say. “You know you want to tell me.”

      “Dear brother, the second I do you will start making exaggerated gagging noises. Don’t even try to deny it,” she says, good-naturedly brandishing a butter knife in your direction. “So once again, I will tell you: I’m not talking about it.”

      “So you scored,” you say, not quite managing to avoid a thrown dish towel.

      Eventually you get up and actually attempt to help with the cake. It comes out looking monstrous, with globs of too-rich frosting smeared haphazardly on the top. You think John would either be proud or terrified.

      “Damn,” is all you can say when you step back to view it. Rose, in a determined show of cheerfulness, begins cutting into it with a knife. The cake sags. So does Rose.

      “The troll crew isn’t going to care,” you say. “Half of them are going to pick up chunks with their hands anyway.”

      “Alas,” says Rose. “That is so true it hurts.”

* * *

 

      You’re showing Karkat one of your new mixes when Terezi and Vriska screech “DREAM BUBBLE INCOMING!” in unison over the comm.

      There is a moment of panic wherein you’re convinced it’s going to be like last time, when you ended up in your apartment, and you’re not sure how to mask the cold fear you’ll feel--but when you open your eyes again you’re standing in what is clearly a troll abode. There are empty bottles of faygo strewn everywhere.

      “This can’t be your house,” you say when Karkat turns to you.

    “I think this is--Gamzee’s hive,” Karkat says, stepping carefully over a clown horn and several juggling clubs. You think, oh yeah; that’s obvious now that he's said it.

      “Hells to the no,” you say. “I don’t want to be here.”

      “Do we have a choice?” Karkat says. He walks over to the computer--husktop--whatever, and peers into it. You pick up a pan of sopor slime with no small amount of disgust. Karkat slams the husktop closed.

      “It was, uh, a conversation he was having with me,” he says to your questioning gesture. “Sweeps ago. Obviously.”

      None of the trolls really talk about Gamzee, so you’re not sure what kind of relationship Karkat had with him. They must have been friends at one point, but Karkat’s posture is one of supreme discomfort, so you don’t push it.

      There is a rustling from one of the doors, you think maybe a closet. You dart next to Karkat, ready to arm yourself as the door starts to open--but Kanaya and Rose tumble out, looking fairly disheveled.

      “I knew it,” you say as Karkat moves forward to help Kanaya up, and Rose gives you what could best be described as the Evil Eye.

      “Ew,” Kanaya says to your left, toeing at a bottle of Faygo. “I do hope we are not stuck here for too long.”

      “Same,” you say. “Do you think the disappearing juggalo himself is actually here?”

      “Unless he was nearby when we entered this dreambubble, probably not,” Rose says, and you all jump a little as Karkat makes a big show of sweeping various bits of trash and clutter out of the way.

      “Well, I don’t see any ghosts around and this is where we fucking ended up, so there’s no use complaining about it,” he says, dropping unceremoniously to his butt. “So we can either stand around ragging on a guy who isn’t even here and who we’ve barely even seen for a god damn sweep, or we can sit and attempt some form of friendly socialization. _Your call_.”

      Rose and Kanaya exchange wary looks before sitting. You move a distance toward Karkat that Rose might call ‘too friendly’, and sit.

      “Dude, you seem angry,” you whisper. Karkat smacks you ineffectually on the shoulder.

* * *

 

      Later, once the dreambubble has passed and after dinner, you trust your instincts and go off in search of Karkat.

      Kanaya directs you towards his room with only a small raise of her eyebrow, and you find yourself knocking an overly-cheerful rhythm on the door until he finally opens it with a scowl. The scowl disappears once he realizes it’s you.

      “Why were you so pissy about Gamzee’s house?” you ask after he lets you in--which is probably one of the more tactless things you’ve ever said, but well, you want to know.

      “I wasn’t _pissy_ ,” Karkat says. “Do you want me to kick you back out?”

      You look around Karkat’s room--which you've never entered before--with more interest than is probably polite. He’s got a pile of pillows in one corner, a big container of what appears to be sopor in another (you think, _that’s right, they’re aliens_ ), a door which leads to a bathroom, and a desk piled high with books and DVDs. “No. Sorry,” you say. You make yourself comfortable on one of the cushions in the pile, and pat another as invitation for him to sit. Karkat looks at you with some emotion you can’t read, but he sits.

      “Okay, so, let me rephrase,” you say. “What did we do to upset you?”

      “We’re best friends and it’s still hard for me to tell whether you’re being a complete hoofbeast’s ass or whether you’re serious,” Karkat says warily.

      That makes you feel kind of like shit. “I’m serious,” you say, “I just don’t know how to turn the cool switch off.”

      “You never turned it on,” Karkat grumbles, but he moves into a more comfortable posture and sighs. “You didn’t really do anything. Gamzee just--he was--we used to be friends, obviously.”

      “Yeah,” you say, trying to arrange your body language into something resembling ‘interested friend who is here for you’.

      “I,” Karkat starts. He rubs at his hair nervously. “I don’t... forgive him for the horrible shit he did, I mean he--he killed my friends, but you--you have to know, we’re different from humans, a lot of stuff we do is considered horrible by your standards.”

      “I know,” you say slowly, beginning to feel a bit wary.

      “Okay, I can’t--this makes me sound like a complete psychopath,” Karkat says, dropping both hands to his lap bonelessly. “All I really need to say is: I wanted to be his moirail.”

      “Oh,” you say. You can’t decide how exactly to react to that.

      “Yeah,” Karkat says. “Now here’s the part where I push you out the door and then beat myself to a pulp over the garbage pit that is my emotions, jesus _fuck_ , there is literally no part of me that makes any sense--”

      “What?” you say. “Wait--Karkat--you’re overreacting.” You manage to grab one of his flailing arms, and he looks at you for a second like a caged animal. “You barely even gave me a chance to react, here. Just cool it for a sec, dude.”

      “Fine. You’re right,” Karkat says, settling back down onto the pillows from whatever weird position his kneejerk anger had contorted him into. He lets you get your thoughts together for all of two seconds before yelling, “But seriously, who the fuck am I kidding? How could I ever think someone like that would like me that way? How in the name of TROLL JESUS could I ever have believed I could have a working pale relationship with someone who loses control that easily--”

      “There’s a troll Jesus?” you say.

      “ _Shut up_ ,” Karkat hisses. His face has gone very red with emotion and you scramble to think of some way to make it better. “You know what? It’s not even him, I’m--I’m embarrassed that I felt that way about someone who everyone fucking hates, but it’s not even--I’m the one who wouldn’t be able to keep someone in line or watch over them if my life depended on it, _I’m_ the one who’s terrible at even existing--”

      “Dude, what?” you say, panic rising in your throat. Karkat has started to get up and you grab at his shoulder, wondering how this got so out of hand. “Don’t even joke about that. You can’t--you can’t be bad at existing, what are you even--I’m glad you exist, I want you to keep existing.”

      That, at least, seems to get to him. All the energy seems to leave him in one breath as he yields to the pressure of your hand on his shoulder. “You do,” he says.

      It’s not a question, but you answer, “Yeah. Of course.”

      Karkat rubs at one eye with the palm of his hand, and your nerves slowly return to normal.

      “I appreciate that, but I--look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m pretty fucking pathetic for a troll,” Karkat says. He sounds—defeated.

      “Maybe you’re just the most human,” you say. Immediately you realize it’s a mistake—Karkat’s posture has gone rigid again.

      “Great,” he says in a strangled voice. “Great, all of my worst qualities were transferred to you idiots, that’s where you get it from, fucking _great_ —”

      “I don’t think they’re your worst qualities,” you interrupt before he can work himself yet again into too much of a snit, but you can't think straight enough to know what to say. “They’re. I mean they’re. You have good qualities. I know you’ve heard me say them before.”

      “Human qualities,” says Karkat, but his voice is softer. “In case you haven’t noticed, asshole, I’m not a human.”

      “No, but you made us,” you counter. “Unless you think we’re all horrible weak failures who deserve to die?”

      There is a second where you think Karkat is going to say just that. Then he deflates.

      “Look,” you tell him, scooting closer, “I’ve told you all about my shitty expectations of who and what I was supposed to be, and what you told me was that none of that really matters anymore and that I was stupid. So that’s essentially what I’m gonna tell you. Alternia is gone forever and whatever would have made you a good, like, citizen of your race doesn’t matter anymore. And you can’t--” You struggle for a second, unable to find the right words. “You can’t always help how you feel about someone. Especially if it happened before all--this. So don’t blame yourself for something like that.”

      Karkat looks at you for one long moment, again with that emotion you can’t discern. Then he looks at his hands. “Thanks,” he says.

      “I’ve thought about a lot of deep shit since being on this meteor, too,” you tell him. “And now I figure that it’s gonna be okay. I mean, yeah, we might all die at the end of this. But we’re all going to die eventually, anyway. Even this universe we’re going to try to create, that’s gonna die someday. So it _has_ to be okay in the end.”

      Karkat sniffs, then abruptly leans against you. “That is disturbingly comforting,” he says.

      The warmth of him against your arm does something painful and wonderful to your insides. You think, _you can’t help how you feel about someone_.

* * *

 

      Now that shit has gotten more real between the two of you, and you’re certain it’s more than just teenage hormones and wanting to bone whoever looks attractive to you (and now that you’ve more or less accepted the fact that the range of people you could potentially be attracted to is much wider than you initially thought), you decide to try and approach this topic with Karkat.

      The thing is, you don’t really know how to go about doing something like ‘initiate a romantic moment’ with Karkat. You spend a lot of time together, but when you’re not chilling listening to music or doing some completely inane stupid shit like drawing dicks in Rose’s book, most of your interactions flip-flop wildly between seeing who can get the other the most riled up, and having some kind of intense, life-altering but thoroughly unsexy feelings conversation. Or one of you confesses your old pale feelings about a murderer and the other has to scramble to keep them from spiraling into a pit of self-loathing again.

      In other words, none of these scenarios are something you’ve yet seen in a rom com.

      Lacking much of a better plan (and at the very least staying true to your usual style of social interaction), you trick Karkat into watching _The Room_ by claiming it’s a masterpiece of human cinema, which in your opinion isn’t entirely untrue.

      He makes it halfway through Tommy Wiseau’s third round of unintelligible pontificating before he says, “Allright, you asshole, you lied to me.”

      "What?" you say. "You're not enthralled by the storytelling?"

      "I am never again making the mistake of letting you pick the movie," Karkat says.

      You miss the chance for a witty and, in your head, possibly flirtatious retort by the sound of your phone pinging with a pesterchum alert.

TT: Dave..

TT: Dvae. I dno’t think I can walk.

TG: what

TT: I had a fihgt with Knyaya today. I really big one.

TT: You’ll be mad at me porbably

TG: rose

TG: oh my god

TG: are you drunk

TT: Yes.

TG: are you seriously drunk right now 

TT: Thats’ why I thought you’d be mda at me.

TT: I didnt’ think i would be afefcted this much.. i didn’t mean to make ittthis strong. Im’ sorry.

TT: Btu I don’t think i can make itw abck to my room mysel.f

TG: no you obviously cant

TG: shit rose you have the worst goddamn timing

TT: soryr.

TG: ok

TG: tell me where you are and ill come get you

      Rose hasn’t, to your knowledge, been drunk since before her first date with Kanaya. You find her in the hallway outside the kitchen, slouched inelegantly against the wall, tear tracks still covering her face.

      “Sorry, Dave,” she says when you reach her. “I’m _so_ sorry...”

      “It’s fine. It’s gonna be okay,” you say to Rose, who is rapidly shaking her head as you attempt to lift her up by one arm. “I don't know what you were fighting about, but you and Kanaya are mature young ladies, you’ll be able to talk it out. You should probably be sober when you do that, though. Upsy-daisy,” you say, and then, “If there is a god out there, you won’t remember that I ever said ‘upsy-daisy’.”

      “No,” Rose is moaning. Your one-arm attempt to lift her isn’t working, so you hoist her up by wrapping your arms around her middle instead.

      “C’mon, Lalonde, gimme some help, here. If you don’t at least try to lift yourself then I’ll have to fly you back to your room fireman-style, and I know you’ll hate that.”

      “I’m not cer--I don’t--my legs may not work right,” Rose says.

      “Whatever, that’s okay,” you grunt as you give her one more hoist, and she manages to balance against your shoulder. “I’ll help you.”

      You get Rose back to her room with no small amount of effort, and by the time you drop her down on her bed, your shoulder is wet with tears. “You’ve really gotta stop doing shit like this,” you say as you help her get her legs onto the bed. “It’s a problem and you’re way too young for it.”

      Rose rolls over onto her back.

      “No, sleep on your side,” you order, and she rolls again. “You could choke on your back, I think. I mean, I think I heard that somewhere. I don’t actually know how drunk you are, but that would be a pretty shitty way to die.”

      The weird thing is, you are so angry and sick with concern right now that’s it’s sort of circled right around in on itself to a sense of extreme collectedness. A mega chill.

      Your phone pings with question marks from Karkat, and you let him know that everything’s fine before wandering vaguely into the bathroom. You could probably get a glass of water, right? That’s probably a good idea.

      “Dave?” Rose calls.

      “Yeah, I’m still here,” you answer. You dump out an old cup of tea, fill it with water from the tap, and walk back out to put it on her crowded bedside table.

      You grab a stray decorative pillow and settle down on the floor by the side of her bed. Rose’s hand flops down into your hair, too heavy.

      “You know I care about you, right?” she mumbles, and there are tears in her voice again. “A lot, a lot.”

      Your throat constricts. “I know,” you tell her. “Go to sleep.”

* * *

 

      Once, right after you turned twelve, Rose sent you a Christmas card. It had a snowman and a cat on it, and on the inside she’d scribbled something carefully worded to sound a little bit insincere. You put it on the refrigerator, secretly charmed by the picture, and the words, and idea of snow. It never got cold enough for it where you lived.

     Bro made fun of you relentlessly for being stupidly sentimental enough to keep the card, but he never took it down.

* * *

 

      You wake up after Rose the next morning, with the mother of all cricks in your neck. She is standing above you holding a bowl of cereal. Her hair is tangled and her face is ashen.

      “Did you take a painkiller?” you ask, rolling your neck and accepting the cereal peace offering. It’s soggy.

      “It isn’t really going to kick in for a while. I will talk to Kanaya today, under the--perhaps mistaken--assumption that I possess an ounce of actual emotional maturity,” Rose says, crawling back into her bed. “However, right now I would very much like to lie here and pretend I did not almost vomit on you last night over my first lesbian relationship fight.”

      “Okay,” you say. You put the cereal down, feeling a weird, disappointed sadness in your chest. You’re not sure what you were expecting. “Well, uh, I guess I did my duty as a friend and made sure you didn’t die.”

      You stand up, feeling even weirder as you turn to find that Rose has curled in on herself with one hand in her hair.

      “I never said thank you,” Rose says, her voice quiet and hoarse. She’s looking at her knees.

      “It’s no big,” you say, unsure how to handle this. “I mean, jesus, I’m not just going to leave you alone over something like that--”

      “No, it’s not that,” Rose says, “What I mean is, I am grateful for last night, but I--everything, everything that got us here. Two years ago. The green sun.” She’s crying. Shit. “I’m not sure I’ve ever told you.”

      You shuffle your feet, feeling unbelievably tense. You never expected her to bring this up. ‘You’re welcome’ doesn’t seem like an appropriate response.

      Thankfully, you’re saved from having to say anything by Rose taking one large breath to pull herself together, and motioning for you to sit down beside her, which you do. She’s still crying, but it doesn’t tear at you so much.

      “It’s hard to express this to you,” she says, in a marginally calmer voice. “It’s becoming clearer to me that I really should have talked about all this sooner, it’s not--keeping it close to my chest has not been healthy.”

      “I think we’re all pretty much in the same boat there,” you say.

      “Nevertheless,” Rose goes on--you’re pressed shoulder-to-shoulder but she still isn’t looking at you--“I was fully prepared to die alone if that meant keeping the rest of you safe. And I’m not saying that isn’t--I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad quality of mine, wanting to protect the people I care about at any cost.” She stops, because she’s crying again, and you have no idea what the fuck to do so you just lean yourself into her shoulder, saying nothing.

      After a moment of sniffing, Rose says, “The catch is--I didn’t really want to be alone. I was so--I was relieved when you came with me, I was glad you were with me, that’s so selfish--”

      Something deep and protective wells up in you, and you’re momentarily overcome with how much feeling you have for this girl you never met in person until this game changed your life.

      “I’d never leave you alone,” you say, which is probably one of the most dramatic statements you’ve ever made, but fuck it--you’re running on last night’s overcooked popcorn and four hours of sleep on a metal floor. “I promise. Not unless that’s what you really want. I’ll go with you to wherever, where the fuck ever it is, I’ll--I promise.”

      Rose sniffs again, wetly. She grabs your hand and squeezes harder than you thought she had strength to do. “Thank you,” she says thickly, putting her head on your shoulder.

      The most fucked-up thing is that there's a pretty big part of you that's glad you're here, now. You've felt more actual love and have become more emotionally well-adjusted due to playing SBURB than you ever would have been had your life gone on as normal in Houston.

* * *

 

      Later that night, after Rose has made up with Kanaya, most of the meteor crew plays the troll version of poker, which has no relationship to actual poker that you can discern. Rose and Terezi still sweep the floor with everyone. Karkat throws a not-entirely-serious fit and you laugh so hard you cry.

 

* * *

 

      You try for another potentially romantic moment with Karkat. You agree to watch a romcom he likes, you attempt to get your hair to look really fucking nice, and you even read up a bit on some idiosyncrasies of troll culture and romance so that you can have a fucking suave and adult conversation with him if he brings it up.

      Halfway through the movie, Karkat puts one hand on your knee, seemingly without noticing. You chicken out so hard that you’re out the door and back in your room before the credits have even finished.

 

* * *

 

      Vriska decides that you should all start practicing for the big fight at the end of this trip, which... isn’t unreasonable, actually. There is very little objection to her suggestion, but she stomps around yelling about courage and preparedness nonetheless, citing the fact that only she has luck on her side.

      You’re reluctant to actually practice your swordsmanship for reasons that you understand, now, but you also know full well that you need to be prepared if you don’t want yourself and everyone you care about to be killed. So you agree to be in the first round of sparring practice, which is how you end up facing off against Terezi and her dragon-head-sword on the roof of one of the buildings.

      The whole thing is too familiar for comfort.

      “Where are Rose and Kanaya?” Vriska says. You, Terezi, and Karkat shrug in unison. “People, what is the point in creating a beautiful plan if a third of our group is not going to adhere to it? Am I asking too much?”

      “Yes, apparently,” Karkat says, and Terezi snickers.

      “They probably lost track of the time,” she says, grinning. “Or they just plain did not care, Vriska, but that’s their loss.”

      “Damn straight, babe,” says Vriska. “All right, let’s get this show on the road! Strider, are you ready to face off against a blind girl?”

      You’ve got your stupid welsh monstrosity all equipped and everything. “I’m fully aware of how fearsome the legislacerator is, blind or not,” you say, with more cheer than you feel, and Terezi hoots in delight. “The question is: can she handle the dopest sword-slinger this side of Texas?”

      “Oh my almighty fuck,” Karkat says, “Just get on with it!”

      Vriska puts two fingers to her lips and whistles, which you didn’t realize she could do. Terezi wastes no time.

      She’s very good, which you expected, and her blindness does not seem to be much of a weakness (which you also expected). Then again, you suppose you’ve been training to do this very type of thing since before you can remember, so you hold your own. Vriska and Karkat holler words you can’t catch on the edge of your makeshift ring. The sound of metal on metal still grates on your nerves--again, as you expected--but the fact that you’re pretty sure that Terezi is not actually hoping to hurt you helps, and you swing back into the almost hypnotic pull and press of movements that you trust your muscles to remember.

      That is, until you slip too close to the edge of the roof, fear momentarily gripping your throat, but you can fly, god damn it, you’ll be fine--then the next swipe Terezi aims at you barely misses, and you lose your balance, suddenly remembering a day very like this one and the way the crows scattered noisily as you swerved and hit the concrete. There’s a sudden, sharp stitch in your side--you’re out of shape after all--and you bang your knees on the metal. Then you look up, and for a second Vriska’s tall form running toward you, and the glint of light from her glasses, looks like something else entirely. For a second you think you see blood dripping out from the hand you’ve pressed to your side, an old and--it turned out--superficial wound. For just a second you see the bodies of your many doubles strewn out on the cold rooftop.

      “Damn, Strider,” Vriska says, leaning down. Karkat jogs to a stop beside her. “That wasn’t bad, talk about an acrobatic fucking pirouette--did she get you?”

      “No,” you say, tasting bile in your throat. “I’m fine.”

      “Are you sure?” Karkat says. You pull your hand from your side to show him.

      Vriska has her hands on her hips, looking more annoyed by the second. “He just said he’s fine. You do look like shit to me though, Strider. Get up and let’s have someone else go this time. If you can’t take it then you can at least observe.”

      You can feel your heart begin to race so hard that your limbs start to shake. “Yeah, okay. I’m just, uh, not feeling so great all of a sudden,” you say, “I’ll watch--I’ll practice more later, just gonna rest--”

      You leave before anyone can object, hearing Terezi’s faint exclamation of concern as you move as fast as your feet will take you down the stairs and toward the transportalizer.

      You make it as far as the common room before your legs give out. You know it’s just panic, it’s just panic and you’ve felt this before and you’ve always survived it, but your head is swimming and your heart is racing and it feels like you’ll never be able to take a breath again. You can still see the imagined blood dripping from your hands.

      Karkat appears in the transportalizer to your left, stumbling almost to the floor as though he’d been running. He asks again if you’re hurt; you shake your head ‘no’ but he makes his way over anyway, pulling your shaking hands from your face and looking you over with determined eyes. Then something in his face changes. He stands up, blocks the transportalizer with a broken chair, and returns to help you to your feet.

      “Come on,” he says, and he’s supporting most of your weight, he’s stronger than you thought, “just over to the couch, that should be better--come on, Dave.”

      You let him manhandle you to the couch, feeling vaguely like you’re about to float out of your skin. Karkat puts his hands on your shoulders and says, “Watch how I’m breathing,” like he’s done this before, like he knows--

      “I thought it would be okay,” you babble, feeling like a child again and so incredibly helpless, “I thought I would be fine, I know I’ll have to do it again but I don’t want to--”

      You are terrified, if you’re being honest--and intellectually you know that you’ll be fine, your life isn’t threatened, it’s just panic, but your blood is pounding so hard that it hurts, and you _feel_ like you could die, and you don’t know how to say this to Karkat--

      “You’re not going to die,” Karkat says, his hands a steady strength on your shoulders, and there’s no disgust or embarrassment or contempt in his voice. Just understanding. “We’ll worry about the training shit when it comes to it. Just watch me right now.”

      Karkat, who cares so much about everyone that it drags him down, sometimes makes him bitter, sometimes makes him angry and frightened. Karkat who is here and talking to you like he understands and who cares about you, specifically. Karkat who cares about you.

      You stay there watching his breathing like it’s a lifeline, slow and steady until you can almost match it to your own. He pats you, gently, on the side of your neck.

* * *

 

      What happens next is that, once you’ve calmed down (but before you quite feel like you’re back in your body again), you fall asleep on Karkat’s shoulder.

      When you wake some time later, startled and finally feeling like you belong in your own flesh and blood, Karkat’s looking at you like he’s finally made up his mind about your character. You feel an intense wash of embarrassment.

      “Sorry,” you blurt, “Can we just, like, pretend I wasn’t the world’s biggest wuss and act like this never happened--”

     “No,” Karkat says. His brow is furrowed. “I don’t think you’re a wuss, I just--look, I--Dave. Dave.”

      You stare. You’re still mortified. “What.”

      “I’m conflicted, here,” he says, in a voice that is too loud even for him. You realize abruptly that he still has his hand on the back of your neck. “I know this probably isn’t the best time--I mean--I’m--I want to say something, or do something, but I know from everything you’ve told me that humans can sometimes be weird about this sort of thing, and this, this particular situation is pretty weird for trolls too, and I’m pretty sure I have the right idea but I don’t want to read the situation wrong--”

      “What did you want to do?” you interrupt. He’s babbling like you usually do, and your heart is suddenly beating very hard; not at all like it had been before you fell asleep, but rather in that way that makes it feel like your stomach is going to do flip-flops. You remember his hand on your knee during the last movie.

      Karkat falters. “I--what do _you_ think I’m going to do?”

      That’s a cop-out if you’ve ever heard one, and this hadn’t been your ideal time to finally do this, but his face has gone very red, so you grab his shoulders and lean in. It’s scary as fuck because the last person you kissed was Terezi like two years ago, so you’re not certain you remember how to do it right, but Karkat puts his other hand on your neck like he’s practiced the motion (he probably has). Your stomach does indeed do those flip-flops, way up in your ribcage.

* * *

 

      The transportalizer is blocked, but Vriska still walks in on you, through the doorway, ten minutes later.

****  
  
  



	7. Fifteen (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS FOR WAITING!!!

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

 

TG: rose

TT: Can it wait? I’m about to go to a strategy meeting.

TG: a strategy meeting

TG: seriously

TG: was i invited

TT: No.

TG: cause if so im gonna have to decline

TG: oh

TT: And that is why you were not invited.

TG: wow

TG: look thats fine

TG: im frankly pretty offended but whatever

TT: Dave, you have never once expressed even an ounce of interest in planning or, honestly, even participating in any further aspects of SBURB/SGRUB gameplay. You’re not fooling anyone.

TT: Regardless, I really do need to go. Is it extremely important?

TG: not really i guess

TG: ok look can i just talk to you when you get back then

TT: Yes, allright.

  
  


* * *

 

 

 

        The thing is, you don’t really know how to handle the aftermath of making out with your best bro after being put through the emotional wringer--and then deciding, once your head has cleared, that you are too fucking scared to continue on in that vein. It’s not precisely something you’ve been through before. So you and Karkat make weird, stuttering, half-finished greetings and avoid one another in the hallways for the next three days.

        Vriska keeps popping into the common areas “unexpectedly” whenever you’re around. You wonder if she’s doing the same to Karkat. You’re pretty sure she’s gossiped to at least Terezi.

        Unfortunately, you can’t really think of a good reason to avoid Terezi without it becoming A Thing, the way it had last year. So you decide to roll with it by sitting down beside her at the breakfast table one day after sticking your butt-ugly alchemized poptarts in the toaster, and saying (before she can get a chance to ask you something personal about your massive training freak-out), “How exactly did you and Vriska become moirails?”

        Terezi sniffs loudly, like someone’s disapproving great-aunt. “That’s a bit of a personal question!”

        “Is it?” you say. “You guys shoot diamond signs at each other across the room constantly. For a while I thought you’d actually glued yourselves together at the hip. I didn’t think you were trying to keep it on the down-low.”

        You get the impression that Terezi is trying to roll her eyes. “Being open about the fact that I’m in a pale relationship doesn’t mean I will share personal details with you, mister coolkid.”

        You sigh. “Nobody wants to share their personal details with me. I’m feeling kinda dissed here.”

        Terezi shoves you--rather gently, for her--on the shoulder. You try to forget that three days ago you stumbled away from your sparring match and had an emotional breakdown like a fucking wimp. “We just sorta asked each other if that’s what we wanted, you big human baby. It wasn’t hard!”

        “Okay,” is all you can think to say. “I think that’s a lie, but okay.”

        Terezi leans back, sliding her glasses down to the tip of her pointy nose. “Why do you want to know?”

        The toaster goes off. You hoist yourself to your feet to get your poptarts. “Fuck you, I don’t need to share my personal details.”

        Terezi throws her plastic cup at you. You block it in midair by throwing one of the poptarts. The Mayor, just entering by the doorway, throws his arms up in a cheer.

 

 

* * *

 

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

 

TG: rose

TG: you never told me when your meeting got done the other day

TG: are you with kanaya or something right now

TG: ok look

TG: just so you know im not gay

TG: fuck

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

 

 

* * *

 

 

        The other thing is, now that you’ve gone ahead and done the thing you’d been wanting to do for a while, you kind of wish you could take it back. The more time passes without seeing Karkat, and the more you allow yourself to think about it, the larger of an issue it becomes in your head.

        It’s not that you regret it, precisely. It’s not that it was bad. It was pretty great, kissing Karkat. Better than you expected, actually--though not technically, technically you were both pretty inexperienced so it wasn’t that great, but the way you felt about it, wow, yeah--better than you expected. Which is scary as fuck.

        You liked it--you’d goddamn _planned_ on doing it and it had happened, albeit not in the context you would have liked--but now you feel like you’ve done something wrong. You thought you were okay with being the Dave Strider who, in fact, liked dudes, but the... genuineness of the enjoyment you felt is kind of scaring you a little.

        You also can’t shake the thought that maybe the way you’re feeling is a little bit stronger than whatever Karkat’s feeling; that maybe it’s a little more than it should be, that maybe it came over you too fast, that maybe what he wants is a moirails thing like Vriska and Terezi have, that maybe (worst of all) he was just feeling sorry for you--

        You think: you’ve endured a lifetime of being randomly thrown into impromptu sparring matches, of being woken up in the middle of the night to go up onto the roof, of raising your defenses around every corner--yet now you can’t even handle a friendly practice fight without absolutely fucking losing it? Now your concerns have shifted from survival to whether or not you can delicately brush your hand against your best friend’s without swooning like a tight-laced victorian consumption victim? It’s ludicrous.

        Besides which, you just don’t know if you’re ready to be That Guy. Dave Strider, Bisexual Dude. Yeah, okay, technically you’re the same person you’ve always been and it’s not like you weren’t always Dave Strider, Bisexual Dude from the time you first started feel attraction for people, it was just that you didn’t want to think about it and--

        And none of your friends really know. What if they think you’re lying? What if this changes how they see you?

 

 

* * *

 

 

        Rose doesn’t check pesterchum for a day after your last message. You know this because you know that she’d find you immediately upon reading it, maybe even with pen and paper at the ready, and she doesn’t corner you in the library until the next day.

        “It was nothing,” you mumble when she asks, pretending to look at an Alternian book of poetry, because you’re regretting ever thinking of going to her for advice.

        Rose gives you a deadpan look. “Dave, you can’t message me ‘I’m not gay’ in the middle of the night, with absolutely zero context, and expect me not to try and follow up on the matter.”

        “I was just making sure you knew,” you say.

        Rose sighs. “Is it something to do with the person we have all completely not noticed you’ve not been spending time with?”

        Your face burns. You don’t know why you ever thought you could have any private business on a meteor with only six other social residents and one loner juggalo. You snap the book shut and start walking.

        Rose follows, looking frustrated. “Dave, I may remind you that you’re the one who came to me about this. Do you want to talk to me or not?”

        “Not,” you say, and your face burns all the way back to your room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

TT: I am just going to say one thing: please don’t repeat the Great Terezi and Dave Silent Treatment Debacle of Year Two, as we’ve unanimously decided to call it.

TT: If you have an issue with someone, you should really talk to them about it.

TT: And yes, I realize that’s “rich,” coming from me.

 

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

        God damn it, she’s right.

 

 

* * *

 

 

        Five days after The Kiss--as you’ve started to refer to it in your head (jesus h. christ)--you walk into the common room and see Karkat sitting on The Couch (jesus h. christ on a pogo stick) reading a book. Your heart freezes in your chest and your palms start to sweat and you stand there in the doorway like a fucking deer in the headlights until he looks up at you.

        “So, uh,”  you say, with what you consider a remarkably steady voice, “have you been avoiding me?”

        Which is such a--a stupid fucking thing to say. Of course he’s been avoiding you.

        Karkat says, “No,” and then you both stand there awkwardly looking at each other as that hangs in the air.

        “Allright dude,” you say after a moment, “let’s just agree not to lie because you really suck at it.”

        “Fuck you, like you haven’t been doing the same thing,” Karkat grumbles, which breaks the tension enough that it makes you feel marginally better. “I’m talking to you now, right?”

        You shuffle forward and drop into the chair next to the couch. Your insides are still kind of wiggly, but you inhale as deeply as you can and it helps, a bit. “Should we, like... talk about, uh, the other day?”

        Karkat looks at you, but he doesn’t quite meet your eyes. “Do you think we should?”

        You open your mouth once, then close it. He’s not reacting the way you thought he would. “I mean... yeah, probably? I don’t want to stop hanging out with you. We didn’t do movie night.”

        And that is just, also, so much not what you really want to say. God damn it.

        “So talk about it,” Karkat says, in a tone of voice that is a bit too challenging for your taste, and it makes something cold drop into the pit of your stomach. He looks like he wants to curl up into a ball and you’re feeling very much the same. You feel it the very moment you lose your nerve.

        “Look, I didn’t mean to--I don’t know what I’m doing, I feel like I made a mistake,” you start, and then you cringe because that’s not really what you meant at all and now Karkat just looks blank, and all you want to explain is that it’s not--it’s not easy for you, you don’t know yet how to overcome the feeling that you’ve got it all wrong, you don’t know how to ask him what he wants--

        “I want us to stay friends,” you try again, and whatever else you wanted to say flies out the window because Karkat’s face shuts down faster than anything you’ve seen.

        “Fine,” he says, in a voice so clipped you know he’s misunderstood--but you can’t find the words to clarify, so you ramble on about potential movie night plans instead, and when it gets late you both leave without saying goodbye.

 

 

* * *

 

 

        You find the Kanye West music you’ve still got on your ipod. You plug it in to some speakers, and then you and the Mayor bop your heads and construct a high-rise office building to the beats of the _Graduation_ album.

        As you finish up the spire (made from a poorly-alchemized coat hanger), you hear the lyrics: _It’s sorta fly you get a chance to say hi to / People you never got a chance to say bye to_. You rip the ipod from the speaker jack. The spire wobbles, then falls onto the Mayor’s head.

        “Sorry,” you tell him, tucking the ipod back into your hoodie pocket. Your chest suddenly feels tight. “Kanye West is dead.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

 

TG: rose

TT: Oh, am I worth talking to again?

TG: jesus christ lady

TG: where do you even store all that sass n snark n complete inability to forgive when your ectobiological bro acts like a teen ass

TT: I’ve got a special walk-in closet dedicated solely to the storage of those attributes. There is an entire filing cabinet just for “Anger at Dave Strider”. It hardly ever collects dust these days.

TG: thank you for that

TT: You’re welcome.

TG: so hey

TG: do you ever feel like you just

TG: never learned how to be an actual human being

TT: My, what a question.

TG: well

TG: do you have an answer

TT: I'm attempting to formulate a good response.

TT: Until extremely recently I have been attempting to handle every intense feeling I’ve had via the dulling embrace of alcohol. As you well know, I am embarrassed to say.

TT: Perhaps that’s answer enough.

TG: yeah i guess so

TT: Dave.

TT: If you’re having an emotional breakdown again, please just give me some warning. I want ample time to retrieve my very best pad and paper to take notes.

TG: ha fuckin ha

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] --

  
  
  
  


* * *

 

 

        At dinner, Vriska invites you to a sparring match again. You decline. She narrows her eyes at you and complains, loudly, but you tune her out.

        “Dave, you were a shockingly good opponent!” Terezi exclaims. “Up until the last few minutes.”

        “Thanks,” you say, dully. Kanaya is eyeing you from the far end of the table.

        “I will bring my chainsaw this time,” she says, turning away.

        “That’s what I’m talking about!” Vriska cries.

 

 

* * *

 

 

        “I don’t mean to be a hypocrite, since I didn’t even attend last time,” Rose says, “but Vriska’s right--you’re going to have to start practicing again.”

        “I know,” you say, and you do. It’s just that the thought of picking up your sword again-- “Next time. I’ll do it next time.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

You wake from a very vivid dream of breaking your arm on the roof as a child, and make it to your bathroom just in time to vomit up that evening’s mac n’ cheese.

Then all you can think about is how much better Karkat made you feel the last time you panicked.

 

\-- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] --

 

TG: karkat

TG: are you awake

TG: karkat

CG: I AM NOW.

TG: ah shit

TG: nevermind

TG: sorry

CG: HEY, WAIT. IS SOMETHING WRONG?

TG: no not really

TG: its stupid

TG: sorry i dont know why i thought youd want to talk to me in the middle of the night

TG: or like day i guess for you

CG: DAVE, SHUT UP. WE’VE TALKED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PLENTY OF TIMES BEFORE. I NEED TO STOP BEING SUCH A PETULANT FUCKING WIGGLER ABOUT ALL THIS ANYWAY.

TG: all this

CG: YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, STRIDER.

CG: SO GO AHEAD AND TALK. I’M LISTENING.

TG: are you

TG: are you sitting there with the pillow in your lap all attentive

CG: ARE YOU SERIOUS, DAVE? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?

TG: yes

TG: its vitally important i know whether youre doing the earnest attentive thing

CG: OH MY GOD. I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU.

CG: FUCK. YOU.

 

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

TG: oh shit sorry

TG: karkat

TG: SORRY

 

 

* * *

 

 

        Karkat visits the next day, when you’re working on Can Town with the Mayor. You barely contain yourself before he settles near you with some chalk before blurting, “Sorry!”

        He looks startled. “It’s fine, holy shit. Everyone knows being an ass is your defense mechanism.”

        You don’t know what to say to that. It sounds like something _you’d_ say, which is a reminder that you guys have been bros for a good bit of time now. Your whole body is buzzing with want and the persistent feeling that you’ll never know how to be okay with that.

        After a half hour or so of work punctuated with the Mayor’s swift but silent instructions for repairs to different parts of the city, you kneel down next to Karkat. While the Mayor is distracted with the details of the post office, you take a deep breath--which you’ve been doing a lot of lately--and place your hand over Karkat’s, where it’s holding him up on the floor. He doesn’t move his hand to grasp yours, but neither does he pull it away.

        “Dave,” Karkat says, looking pained, “Can you just tell me what you want?”

        “I don’t know,” you admit, because you figure you’ve grown close enough throughout this trip, kiss or no kiss, that he has a right to know. “I’m not used to, you know, people caring about me. I don’t know what to do when they do.”

        Karkat looks at you. “Why?”

        You shrug. “I don’t know, man. I guess growing up it was just kinda impressed upon me that no one would ever actually give that much of a shit about me. I had no reason not to believe that until pretty recently in life.”

        You wait. Karkat doesn’t say anything, and you know with agonizing certainty that he gets it. Why wouldn’t he? He’s told you what his status was on Alternia.

        “My lusus cared about me, at least,” Karkat says abruptly. “Your lu--your Bro--”

        “I’m realizing a lot of shit about him, yeah,” you interrupt. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

        Karkat says, “Okay,” and turns away again, though the atmosphere hasn’t gone completely cold. He lets his hand linger on yours for just a moment longer before standing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

        You know you have reached a truly new point of pathetic when Rose carries her knitting supplies to your room and pretends that it’s because she wants company. You let her in, watching her arrange her yarn on the wobbly desk.

        “So,” she starts when you don’t do anything but flop back down on your bed.

        “Yes, we can finally talk about how I fucked up with Karkat,” you say before she can go on.

        “I see,” Rose says. Then, squinting, “I realize what I’m going to ask may be presumptuous, but, ah, given everything you’ve been saying to me this week: Are you... dating Karkat?”

        “No,” you answer.

        “Oh,” says Rose.

        “I mean, I kissed him,” you say, and Rose’s face lights up with the fire of interest so fast that you’re almost scared. “And then, like, ran away like the total douche I am because apparently I can’t face my own god damn emotions or talk to anyone like a fully developed person.”

        “That’s harsh,” Rose says, though not in a tone that suggest she disagrees. “Can you tell me how it ‘went down’, so to speak?”

        “You won’t even tell me whether or not you scored with your girlfriend, and you expect me to give you the down and dirty on how I royally fucked up my super gay love moment?”

        “I wouldn’t put it in those words,” Rose says.

        “I still like girls,” you say, because you feel the need to make sure she knows this for some reason.

        “I am aware that bisexuality is a thing that exists, yes,” Rose says, her mouth quirking up. “Go on.”

        You try to resist, but your propensity for running at the mouth hasn’t actually waned as you’ve grown, so you give in after about ten seconds. “So, you remember last week when we were all supposed to be practicing our mad skills on that observation deck? And how you and Kanaya didn’t actually show up? And how later that day no one could get into the common room through the transportalizer?”

        “Oh,” Rose says. “ _Oh_. That explains Vriska--right. How exactly did you fuck it up?”

        This is making you massively uncomfortable. “Because I freaked out later and now I don’t know how to act, and I keep forgetting how not to upset Karkat, and I guess I was already still, just, fucking out of it from having to use my sword, and everything.”

        Rose’s brow furrows. “I don’t understand. Use your sword? What do you mean?”

        Here it goes. “I had a fucking panic attack,” you admit, the words coming out in a rush. “I know it’s stupid--”

        “It’s not stu--you had a panic attack?” Rose says, to her credit looking more concerned than interested. “Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

        “Because you’re not actually my psychiatrist? When was I supposed to fucking tell you?” you snap. “I bolted after I was done practicing on the roof, and then Karkat came after me and did, like, a majestically wonderful job of calming me down which I apparently didn’t deserve, and I told you the rest of what happened.”

        “ _That’s_ when you kissed him?” Rose says, and you’d be appreciating how much you’re bowling her over with surprise if you weren’t so upset.

        “I mean, he,” you start, feeling your already low mood plummet to the ground, “he said something that sort of implied he wanted to do it, and, y’know, I had finally decided it was okay for me to want to, too, so I just--went for it.”

        Rose doesn’t say anything. You throw your head back and cover your face with your hands to avoid her gaze.

        “Do you,” Rose starts, and you can hear her choosing her words very carefully. “Do you not think it’s okay for you to want that anymore? Because I do--understand. I may not have grown up with the same pressures as you, but I do understand.”

        You sit up. You believe her. “Yeah. I guess.”

        “You are allowed to want it,” Rose tells you, and she doesn’t raise an eyebrow or tease you for your face heating up. Damn, this is getting real.

        “I know, technically, it’s just--” It’s just, how do you undo a lifetime of programming telling you that just being who you are, wanting what you want, is pathetic? “I think he pities me,” you say miserably. “I didn’t think about it before, but--that’s what trolls feel when they want someone that way, right? Pity. That’s not what I _want,_ it’s not--of course he just--I finally showed him what a fucking weak tool I am and he pities me for it. Of course that’s why he’d do it then.”

        Rose is looking at you with way more sympathy than you expected. Her mouth twists and she stabs one of her knitting needles into the ball of yarn.

        “That’s what they call it,” she says carefully. “That’s what they call it, Dave, but it’s the same emotion we feel. I’m fairly sure of it.”

        You think about the way Kanaya looks at Rose, and about the way Rose looks at Kanaya.

        “You’re not weak,” Rose says after a time, but you only shake your head. “If it helps,” she says in a different voice, mouth quirked wryly at her half-finished scarf, “I panicked the first time I picked up knitting needles after things settled down here.”

        Something tugs at your gut. You want to ask why she didn’t want to come to you, at the time, but it’s past the point of dredging it up. “We’re really not like the trolls in that respect, huh.”

        “Kanaya apparently had some trouble just putting on her lipstick,” Rose says. “Do not ever repeat that to anyone. My point is, whatever it looks like, none of us are unaffected.”

        You consider that. You consider the fact that maybe Karkat really did get it that afternoon on the observation deck, and on the couch. You consider the fact that you have been giving him incredibly mixed signals.

        Eventually your insides start roiling so much that it almost feels like you’re going to throw up. You get up and pace, feeling like the world’s biggest idiot and muttering to yourself until Rose can’t take it anymore and throws her ball of yarn at your chest.

        “Watch it,” you say, “any higher and that would’ve knocked me out.”

        “Listen to me, Dave,” Rose says, looking at you pointedly. Her face is flushed slightly with the force of her emotions, which is a rare sight. “I get why you’re upset, but you have not fucked up past the point of no return. I’m not going to sit here and watch you avoid fixing something again. I am not going to tell you it’s allright to deny yourself something that you’ve clearly wanted and that clearly makes you happy purely because you think you--you don’t deserve it, or it’s not who you’re supposed to be, or what have you. That’s bullshit. It’s bullshit, Dave.”

        A moment passes with only Rose’s heavy breathing. You say, “Wow.”

        Rose stomps forward to grab her yarn back, looking up at you in frustration, and you get the feeling she is understanding a lot more about you than you’ve ever actually told her.  Her gaze has to reach much higher than it did a year ago.

        “Be angry,” she says, and her voice is level but you think you can feel all the undulating power beneath the surface there, the vastness of feeling and retribution that makes up Rose Lalonde. “You deserved better. We all did. Be angry enough to try and get what you want, and let it propel you forward.”

        “That’s something to put on my inspirational posters wall,” you say. Then, “Be angry. Like you?”

        “Yes,” Rose answers, a little defensively. “Like me. We’re stuck here. There’s very little we can do about the current situation or about what we’ll be facing in the future. We can plan, but all we can affect right now is the people around us. Take your happiness where you can get it.”

        She goes back to knitting rather aggressively. You sit back down on your bed.

        “That’s actually sound, sincere advice,” you say eventually.

        Rose lets her breath out in one loud sigh. Her smile reaches her eyes. “I have my moments.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

        You understand what Rose means when she tells you to be angry. At least, you think you do. The problem is that you don’t particularly like feeling angry. The other problem is that, good as the overall message of her advice was, you’re not sure her method of solving problems is always the best one.

        In any case, you have at least made up your mind about one thing.

        It takes you two four-hour-long stretches with your turntables in the common room to finish it, and you don’t think you are, in the end, very good at capturing all of your feelings in this bit of music, but you figure it’s the thought that counts, so when it’s done you upload it to your ipod and convince yourself it’s going to be okay.

 

 

* * *

 

 

        A little over two weeks after The Kiss, you do it.

        You call Karkat from you room. On your phone. Like an adult. The second he answers you can tell he’s got you on speaker.

        You say, “is anyone else around?”

        “What? No,” he says. “Why, do you actually have something personal and serious to say to me?”

        “Jesus fucking christ,” you say, “when did you become passive-aggressive instead of just aggressive-aggressive? Can you stop deliberately trying to make me feel like shit?”

        “What are you talking about?” Karkat says. His voice is raised almost to the point of yelling. “You’re the one that keeps teasing me with the prospect of hashing things out only to brutally yank away my fragile hope with your douchebag ideas of a joke!”

        “I-- _teasing_ you?”

        “Get your thinkpan out of the gutter.”

        “Dude, I don’t--can we not have this conversation over the crab speakers?”

        “What’s wrong with the crab speakers?” Karkat shouts. “The crab speakers are the absolute pinnacle of invention on this scum-encrusted piece of absolute garbage rock we call home, they are the one shining beacon of modernity in this festering hellhole--”

        “Karkat,” you yell back, “I don’t want to have this conversation with you on a pair of speakers shaped like a god damn crab!”

        “Well we’re not going to have it over the little foam ass!”

        “I don’t always call you through the little foam ass--”

        “Dave, it’s become your fucking trademark--”

        “I WANT TO TALK IN PERSON,” you shout, and the other end of the line goes mercifully quiet. “I think we should just, like, have this conversation in person already like a couple of pseudo-adults, and not over any hilariously-shaped novelty walkie-talkies, okay? I know I fucked up and I’ve been avoiding you, and I’ve been giving you the wrong idea. I’m not good at confronting people--”

        “Understatement of the sweep,” Karkat mutters, and you’re momentarily blinded by the sheer absurdity of the fact that _this_ is the guy you want to mack on.

        You really do.

        “Please?” you say.

        “For fuck’s sake, of course,” Karkat says. “Just--meet me in the common room. Nobody’s here right now.”

  
  


 

        You’ve got the ipod in the pocket of your hoodie as you walk down to the common room, and your hands are sweatier than you can ever remember them being. You’re pretty sure you could win a Guinness World Record for sweatiest hands, if the world still existed.

        When you arrive, Karkat is standing awkwardly by the table where the night before you sat concentrating with your turntables. He looks like he’s either going to start shouting, or faint. You feel faintly guilty.

        “Well?” Karkat says. “Go ahead and say whatever it is that had to be said in person.”

        “C’mon, man,” you mumble. “This isn’t easy for me, I just feel like I should explain that to you--all that stuff I was telling you before, before we--you know. About expectations on earth and everything? It’s not like it just--goes away, even if I decide I don’t care--”

        “You think it’s easy for me?” Karkat says, loudly. “None of what I’m feeling is normal, none of it makes any sense to me, it’s not even--even vacillating feelings, I’m just feeling it all at once, so of course I chose the worst fucking possible time to try and act on it.”

        “That wasn’t the worst time,” you say quietly. Karkat presses his lips together into a very thin line, looking pained.

        “It didn’t stop you from freaking out about it, and I don't even fucking blame you," Karkat says hoarsely, and your throat hurts. "I convinced myself this wouldn't happen, but I knew you'd realize what a freak I am--"

        Alarm sirens go off in your brain, and you try desperately to regain control of the situation. This wasn’t what you wanted to happen; you wanted to make it better, to take more of those steps you’ve been so scared of--"What?" you say, and fuck, he's crying. "Dude, that's not--I didn't mean--is that why you’ve been avoiding me?"

        "This is embarrassing enough already, just leave me alone--"

        "Karkat," you say, grabbing his hand. He makes a feeble effort to pull from your grip, but you tighten it. "Listen, I'm just--all I’m trying to say is that this is still a weird thing for me and I didn't mean to make you feel like that, I just--I misunderstood, and I'm sorry I suck at this so much, but I--look, do trolls have mixtapes?”

        Karkat raises his head, his eyes rimmed with red and the bags under them prominent in the dim lighting. The tear tracks make your heart hurt. "What?”

        “Or mix CDs? Like, Is making mixtapes for someone a thing that trolls do? Because I... I didn’t make you a mixtape, actually, but I do have something I want you to hear. Something that I made. I think it’s a pretty similar concept.”

        You fumble for your iPod with your sweaty free hand. Your heart is pounding in your throat, and you sort of feel like throwing up, but an ethereal mental calm has suddenly engulfed you.

        "This isn't funny," Karkat says thickly when you push the iPod at him, finally succeeding in pulling from your grasp.

        “Never said it was. I’m,” you start, and your voice squeaks so you clear it. “I want--the thing we did, after the sparring match? The thing that’s made everything weird? I want to do it again. I mean, if you do.”

        Karkat’s breathing is heavy, but his face isn’t scrunched up anymore. He says, “Why?”

        You decide to steamroll over the doubt before it has a chance to take hold. “Because I liked it. I liked--kissing you, and yeah, that freaked me out and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry--we’ve already established how much I fucking suck in the confronting-things department.”

        “You do suck,” Karkat says, a little bit hollowly. “But I’m at least as much at fault here as you.” Karkat’s looking at you like he’s completely blindsided by this turn of events--and maybe he is. You’re still holding out your stupid ipod.  

        “I'm trying to tell you I like you, dude. Not just friendship-like, though I do think you’re a rad friend. But like-like.” Which sounds like something a second grader would say, christ.

        “Like-like?” Karkat repeats.

        “Red-like, I guess, is the closest thing?” you clarify, and you know your face has gone just that color, but at this very moment you don’t care. “And I can’t believe that I didn’t have the balls to just fucking tell you that in the first place. Uh.”

        “Oh,” Karkat says. He sniffs once, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. You feel simultaneously like a complete asshole, and full of hope.

        Karkat doesn't say anything else, so you untangle your headphones, grab his hand with your left, and pass him the headphones with your right. He glances at you sideways, color starting high in his cheeks, eyes still puffy.

       "Don't cry. Look, I made this track for you,” you say, and the frantic thumping in your chest should be making you feel sick, but it doesn’t—it makes you feel ten stories high. “You’ll like it, dude, I promise.”

        He takes the headphones, and doesn’t let go of your hand, and you feel like the victor of some hard-fought battle in your own mind, better than any you’ve fought in the game.

 

 

  
  
        “It’s not the best I’ve ever heard,” Karkat says eventually, his voice too-loud around the headphones, but he squeezes your hand. It makes you laugh, and then he’s smiling, finally--wide and sincere--and so are you.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me on tumblr! @madseason


	8. Fifteen (3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, finally getting back to updating this took a while. THANKS FOR WAITING!!!!!

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      You realize, in a sort of detached way that you don’t really give much of a shit about, that you’ve started _giggling_. A lot.

      Or at least, whenever you and Karkat are alone together, which is something you both keep finding reasons to be.

      Not that you really need to make excuses--you were already hanging out together a ton before becoming... whatever it is you are now--but there’s something kind of thrilling about it all. There’s something kind of wonderful about messaging him at any given moment-- _hey dude, can town in an hour, or is it storytime with Karkat--_ getting his answer in the affirmative, and knowing that you _both_ know that no, you’re not really going to Can Town, and you’re not really going to read books; you are going to _make out_. (Or try to, anyway. There’s a lot of jerky starting and stopping and sometimes you require so much dancing around the subject before you actually get to it that you don’t get to it all. But it’s the thought that counts).

_Then_ you’ll go to Can Town.

      You’re Dave Strider, and you like boys, and you like one very specific boy in particular, and you don’t think you’ve ever felt this exhilarated in your life.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

      Rose sidles up to you at breakfast one day, coughs discreetly into one hand, and slides what looks like some kind of Alternian medical textbook across the table to you, like you’re a pair of secret agents at a rendezvous point. Mouth full of a dubious mix of cereals, you just raise your eyebrows at her. She raises hers right back.

      “I thought,” she drawls, “that more info on troll anatomy might be, ahem, more relevant to your interests in light of recent events.”

      You slap the book off the table so fast your palm burns with the aftershock. Cereal and milk slosh over the rim of your bowl, and the book slides across the floor an impressive distance. Rose’s laughter is, maybe, the most frighteningly delighted laugh you’ve ever heard. It’s at least in the top ten ranking of Disturbing Rose Laughs. There are actual tears streaming down her face. It’s not doing great things for her mascara.

      “I’m happy for you,” she says, wheezing a bit, as you grumble over the milk dripping into your seat. “Mr. Strider, I would like to officially welcome you to the xenophiliacs club.”

      “Rose, no,” you say, helplessly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      “Rose is going to say ‘I told you so’ soon, I can feel it,” you tell the Mayor, wedging a can in place with what is probably more force than necessary. “Even though I already laid everything out in the fucking open for her, even though we both know what’s going on and had a sincere discussion about it, even though she was being downright _helpful_ for a second there, she’s still gotta find a way to shoehorn in her psychoanalysis bullshit and be all, ‘you see, David, I could tell from the very first moment we exchanged overzealously insincere words that you were in the closet.’ Like she’s not in the same goddamn boat? Listen, the only things in my closet were apple juice, stockpiles of ramen, and occasionally clothes. And my name isn’t even fucking David.”

      You realize suddenly that the Mayor hasn’t continued construction for some time now. He’s just looking at you with a posture that clearly conveys wariness.

      “I’m sorry, man,” you say. “You’re trying to figure out a solution for petty crime in Can Town and I’m over here whining about my sister being vaguely smug. Talk about priorities.”

      “What did you do to make Rose vaguely smug?” Karkat asks, and you turn to see him in the doorway, struggling a bit with an armful of knick-knacks and building materials. “I mean, this time.”

      “Existed,” you answer, standing to relieve him of some of the crap he’s carrying. You’re not sure what Can Town might need a tangled wad of yarn for, but by golly, you’ve got some now just in case. “Became the walking embodiment of the dick joke that she always dreamed I would be.”

      Karkat snorts. “Are you more the dick, or the joke?”

      “Rich coming from the dude who still doesn’t know what dicks look like,” you shoot back.

      Karkat, who’d been padding around Can Town carefully placing materials, dumps the rest unceremoniously into the last empty corner. “Just because I don’t immediately stop and gasp delicately at the shitty renditions you seem to want to doodle _everywhere_ ”--he raises his eyebrows pointedly--”doesn’t mean I don’t know what they look like.”

      The Mayor stands suddenly, dusting the chalk off his hands, and beckons you both back toward the door. Break Time.

      “Dude,” you say, suddenly hit with an idea that makes you run back to grab the chalk, “you know what would cheer me up right now? Hopscotch.”

      “...What?” Karkat says.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      “ATTENTION, METEOR RESIDENTS!” Terezi shouts over the comm, and you and Kanaya wince in unison; you just barely manage to keep a hold on your Go Fish cards. Rose sips her tea serenely. “Terezi Pyrope here with a very important announcement! There has possibly been some kind of new life form growing in the trash compactor judging by the odor, and I really think somebody should take care of that--”

      The sound of a brief scuffle over the speakers--across from you, Karkat grumbles, “I’ve been saying that for _weeks_ ”--then Vriska’s voice: “There will be training exercises again this evening! The fate of your own dumb lives could potentially rest on your ability to not suck in battle, but hey, don’t take my word for it--just ask Rose, who’ll give you a cryptic, stupid answer when you attempt to actually utilize her abilities for planning purposes!”

      Rose takes another serene sip of her tea, and you wonder just what it was she did to piss Vriska off. Kanaya catches your gaze and shrugs. You mouth, _got any twos?_

      Vriska continues, “We’re meeting at six sharp, so be in the battle room--” Terezi’s voice takes over, “Nobody calls it that, just tell them it’s the one that smells like melted butter and black--” “ _Nobody knows which room that is, Terezi_ \--”

      “Oh, I believe I actually do know that one,” Kanaya says. Then, “Dave, go fish.”

      “Six sharp, in the battle room!” Vriska yells breathlessly, and your vague concern for Terezi’s well-being is alleviated when you hear her laughing in the background. “And if you forget what time it is, ask Strider--show him he’s actually good for something. Scourge Sisters out!”

      The comm clicks as it’s turned off, and your hands over the pile of cards have suddenly gone cold. “I’m not actually a clock,” you say to the room at large, already planning to be anywhere other than the training meeting at six sharp.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      Kissing is... fucking wonderful. And difficult.

      It’s not that you don’t like it, because you do--a lot. But, apparently, when you’re not high on adrenaline or overcome with relief, there’s a small part of your brain that wants to keep reminding you how ‘weird’ this is. How it’s not what you expected yourself to be, how you shouldn’t be enjoying it as much as you do, how you should be spending your time better, or whatever the fuck else.

      The fifth time you have to jerk yourself away with a mumbled, “sorry,” you want to tear at your hair with frustration.

      “It’s fine,” Karkat says, like he always does. He never gets mad and has never pushed you, but he can never completely hide his disappointment. He always seems so genuinely happy to do the mouth tango that you feel even worse for needlessly cutting it short. You’re not sure, exactly, what he thinks is so great about you--like, yeah, sure, there’s a high chance that _you_ would probably do the mouth tango with your own damn self if you weren’t so turned off by using your time powers nowadays, and maybe you might actually react to that better because you can’t have a gay--bi? god--existential crisis through making out with your own time clone, can you? Is making out with yourself gay, or just super narcissistic? Or is it both?

      And anyway, the long-ass bout of mumbling and staring off into the distance you just had is one of the reasons you’re not entirely sure what Karkat thinks is so great about you. Not that you’re complaining, now that you’ve finally decided to be honest about this. Don’t look a gift hoofbeast in the mouth or whatever.

      Karkat is looking at you with the curve of his generous eyebrows torn between showing concern for your well-being, and mild fear. “You know, if you’re not comfortable, uh, we don’t have to--”

      “No,” you say, “No, dude, I’m _so_ fucking comfortable. One hundred percent chill.”

      Karkat stares at you.

      “I mean,” you amend, “okay, obviously I’m not, but I still _want_ to, like I said before. Hit me with the puckered lips.”

      “That is one of the least alluring things you’ve ever said,” Karkat grumbles, but he hasn’t let go of your waist. “Just so you know, I’m keeping a list.”

      That makes you smile, the kind of sappy one you’ve been doing a lot of lately. Bantering, at least, is familiar territory, and it makes the ball of anxiety that always seems to form in your chest fade a bit. “Oh yeah? What’s at the top of the list of _most_ alluring things I’ve ever said?”

      Karkat thinks on this, eyes cast down to where one hand is nervously fiddling with the fabric of your shirt. His face has gone very slightly pink, and he’s pressing his lips together like he’s fighting back a smile. “You haven’t said anything that would qualify for that list.”

      “Yet,” you tell him. You disagree with that assessment, but you’ll let him think he’s got the upper hand in the romance department, because you’re a gentleman.

      “Yet,” he agrees. “Anyway, you distracted douche, I’m trying to be fucking ‘real’ here, to put it in your asinine terms. This keeps happening, and if there’s actually something wrong I don’t want it to get all pent up and send your blood-pusher over the edge--”

      “And erupt in a volcano of makeouts, laying waste to the town of Dave’s Stupid Fucking Issues? Karkat, tell me you wouldn’t absolutely love that.”

      “Dave, I’m being serious--”

      “My man, I’m hurt that you would think I am anything less than stone cold serious about this,” you say, snaking your arms around his back and leaning him over into something of a dip. “I put my delicate teen feelings out on display for you! I composed a ballad--”

      “It was a fuckton of beeping noises,” Karkat interrupts, and when you sweep forward to dip him even further, floating to achieve it, he lets out a noise like a startled rooster. You laugh.

      “Sorry I keep putting a stop to it, dude,” you begin, setting yourself back down, “but I really do want my face to make intimate contact with your face, and if you don’t believe me I’ll keep sayin’ it whenever you need to hear it. I guess,” you add, because that was too horrifyingly sincere for the mood you’re trying to create here. “And I’m just gonna keep going for it until eventually I stop flipping out. I mean, fuck, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, right?”

      Karkat’s brows have drawn together again, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to protest, but instead he just says, “Okay. So tell me again.”

      He isn’t looking at you, and his face is red now, and damn, you bet yours is too. “I, uh, okay.”

      You go silent like a complete tool, and when Karkat turns back to you he is definitely trying not to grin. “Well?”

      “Yeah,” you say, rather breathlessly. “Shit, man. There’s no one I’d rather fumblingly attempt to make out with.”  Karkat doesn’t bother to stifle his laugh this time as you go for the terrible tango dance moves, and some kind of warmth blossoms in your chest at the delight you’ve caused. You’re not even surprised by how much you mean it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      The thing is, back when living with Bro was your normal, everyday life, you don’t think you were always scared. Or--maybe you were, but you can’t remember it properly because you were so used to it.

      You know that you must have always had anxiety wrapped around you like a vise because that’s gone now, most of the time, and you notice its absence. You know you must have been convinced--until about age 12--that nobody in the world really cared about one another like they did in movies, because you still remember the hard twist of surprised emotion, almost painful, the first time John sent you a letter like he said he would; the first time Jade called you ‘cool’ over voice chat, and the word sounded teasing, and different than you’d always taken it to mean.

      You still feel that, sometimes, when Rose stops by your room for no other reason than to bother you and low-key see how you’re doing; when the Mayor shoos you out of Can Town to remind you to eat; when Terezi detaches herself from whatever web of Vriska’s she’s willingly thrown herself into so she can heckle you a bit; or even when you and Kanaya bump into each other getting coffee or tea at some absurd hour and exchange small talk. You feel it when Karkat puts his hand on your shoulder all pretend-casual, or when he finds a stupid line in a book and walks across the entire fucking meteor to give you an in-person dramatic reading, and you both laugh until you’re in tears.

      You’re getting closer and closer every day to what could be the end, but you have all this to keep with you, and you’re not scared. Not anymore.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      Even though you’re now mostly certain Rose isn’t going to chuck you off to the side just because she found True Love, you still glean quite a bit of amusement from playing the part of third wheel to her romance with Kanaya.

      You did not quite anticipate that Rose would gain the same satisfaction from butting in on your relationship.

      She comes to Can Town, for god’s sake. She’s never been to Can Town before. She follows the Mayor around on the grand tour, and hums and ahhs and makes suggestions for the most fortuitous way to arrange new high-rises. She takes her sweet time embellishing the sicknasty sun you drew on the wall.

      Rose walks into the common room exactly one minute and forty seconds into Movie Night, settles down into a chair beside the couch, and feigns extreme interest in what is mercifully not _Good Luck Chuck_. She listens attentively to Karkat’s detailed post-movie breakdown of how Troll culture would have made the movie approximately six hundred times better.

_She agrees with Karkat_. She agrees with him for forty-five minutes straight as they jump headfirst into a discussion about romantic tropes in troll vs. human media.

      When she leaves, she winks back at you from the doorway.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

      Really, when it comes down to it, you respect Rose’s third-wheel nosiness--she learned from the Third Wheel Master, AKA you, yourself, the Master is you--but you’re slightly worried that she is going to tell someone else. You don’t think she’d do it on purpose, but fuck, you let it slip out to people that she and Kanaya were dating before they really announced it. Rose is much more tactful and much more careful than you, but..

      You’re not ashamed, and it’s not like you aren’t aware that probably everyone has got some inkling that you and Karkat ‘have a thing’, but--but you’re the happiest you’ve been in a long time, and--scratch that, you’re the happiest you’ve ever been _period_ , and part of that is Karkat and part of that is growing up away from Houston and part of that is a messy amalgam of things that you aren’t sure how to address yet, aren’t even sure you can put a name to--and you don’t want anyone else butting in and slapping a label on it.

      You think Karkat feels the same way. Probably.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      Karkat’s palm still gets a bit damp when he holds your hand, either because he’s nervous, or he spends too long holding your hand, or both.

      It makes you grin like an idiot.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      You miss every single training session that anyone bothers to schedule over the next several weeks, and everyone is very carefully not saying anything about it.

      You fall asleep one night and open your eyes in the Land of Heat and Clockwork, gears and metal and suffocating heat all exactly as you remember it, and when you wake again you think, _Fuck it_.

      You equip your sword and walk alone to an unexplored end of the meteor. Then you change your mind, retrace your steps, and settle in one of those rooms with the big presumably dead alien things floating in giant tubes. Nobody seems to go here often, but at least they know where it is, and that’s better if you end up needing help for any reason.

      You tell yourself that makes you feel a little calmer about it. At the very least, you’ve always felt comfortable around dead things floating in jars.

      It’s not so bad once you get going with the exercises--you were more scared of _feeling scared_ again than you were of actual sword practice--and this sword feels different enough in your hands than the ones you grew up with that no bad memories slap you in the face too hard. You choose different moves than he would have chosen, different strikes and different parries. By the time you decide you’re done, when the motions feel fluid again and the sweat is making your shades slide all the way down to the tip of your nose, you actually feel pretty good.

      By the time you get back to your room, you’re not feeling so good.

      You get in the shower and watch your hands shake against the tiled wall with a kind of detached fascination. You think you might throw up or you might start yelling, but that if you do the second thing you might not be able to stop. So you empty your stomach down the drain and your heart beats really fast for a few minutes but then it calms down, and then you turn the shower off and climb into your bed without drying.

      You stare at the opposite wall, and when your head clears you think about how much that fucking sucked. But you don’t feel like you’re going to die.

      You think, _shit, maybe that’s progress_.

 

 

      The next time doesn’t go quite as well.

      You end up leaving your sword somewhere in the middle of the room, walking probably fifteen feet in a random direction, and sitting down because you don’t know what else to do.

      You pull out your phone and stare numbly at Karkat’s increasingly agitated requests to chat, trying to make sense of the words. Eventually, you write back, _im gonna fuckin explode_ , and by the time Karkat finds you, looking frightened out of his mind, you’ve calmed down enough to realize that you probably should have followed that up with some kind of explanation.

      You decide that uncontrollable laughter is somewhat better than throwing up in the shower.

 

 

 

      The next several times are hit or miss, but you’ve never reacted quite as badly as the first time up on the observation deck, and apparently you haven’t yet reacted badly enough that the fear overwhelms your desire to get back in shape enough to protect you friends, so there’s that.

      Karkat puts his arms around you and asks you, for what feels like the hundredth time, what’s wrong--why you keep doing this alone, why you react the way you do, why why why--but even when you want to answer him the words never seem to come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      “So,” Vriska says, settling down into one of the chairs beside where you’ve set up with what could dubiously be called your art supplies. (You can hear the word trail off in 8, _soooooooo_ ). She’s holding a heavily steaming mug of tea in both of her bony hands. You have no idea why or when every fucking girl on this meteor became obsessed with constantly drinking tea, but you don’t trust it.

      Coffee just makes more sense.

      “So,” you say back, when it becomes clear that Vriska isn’t going to continue. “You got a reason for making yourself comfy in my general vicinity? Do I need to make myself scarce before you snatch me up and stick me in the fire like one of those irons you’re always going on about having? Listen, Charlotte, my name ain’t Wilbur and I don’t trust you _or_ your web.”

      “Ugh, nothing you ramble on about ever makes any sense. Trust me, Strider, ‘snatching you up’ is possibly the lowest item on my very long and very important list of priorities.” Vriska makes a show of sipping her tea and pretending that she hasn’t scalded the roof of her mouth in the process. You know for a fact that Terezi frequently warns her about the dangers of too-hot tea due to that one time Terezi burned her tongue and spent a miserable few days unable to taste correctly--but since when has Vriska ever listened to anyone else?

      “That suggests it’s on your list of priorities to begin with,” you say, and jesus christ you’re glad for her answering exasperated sigh because you were actually beginning to fucking banter with Vriska Serket, what has your life come to.

      “I was just wondering what’s up with you and Karkat,” she says. “Like, what quadrant are you?”

      Your heart leaps into your throat. “Whoa,” you say, “hold up, did I miss the point of character development where we became friends or something? Because I’m not seein’ how in the name of this stupid fucking meteor you think I’d wanna sit here and gossip with you.”

      Vriska waves her hand dismissively, like how well you get on is irrelevant. You get the feeling that aggressively ignoring how much she’s ruined her relationships must be the way she’s gotten on until now. “You never _miss_ a chance to talk about yourself.”

      She takes another, more careful sip of tea. You’re just to the point of literally praying for a deus ex machina when Rose sits down across from you.

      “True as it may be that Dave loves to talk about himself, I fear you fall prey to the same character flaw, fair lady Serket,” she says smoothly. Vriska scoffs.

      “If I wanted to play Snarky Horseshit with Rose, I wouldn’t have sat down all the way over here.”

      “Where there’s a Strider, a Lalonde is never far off, awaiting her chance to rip him to shreds in some sort of game of intellectual sportsball,” Rose says. “It’s one of the more unfortunate laws of the universe.”

      “It’s true,” you say, overcome with relief. “My ass is about to be grass and there’s nothing I can do about it. It won’t even be that nice grass they lay down on some suburban hamburger dad’s front lawn to be meticulously cut every week. It’s gonna be, like, that sort of brown, sort of soggy grass that’s next to the Whataburger parking lot and is always kind of brown and soggy for absolutely no reason. It’s not like anybody walks on that grass, what excuse does it even think it has? It’s sad, really.”

      “It’s sad,” Rose agrees.

      Vriska stares at you both. “Sheesh, allright, Rose staked her claim or whatever. I can tell when I’m not wanted.” She rises, careful hands still around her mug. “Can I just say I _love_ that this is how I’m repaid for trying to actually win this thing? Can’t even get a good helping of gossip going.”

      Vriska wanders off like she’s not even bothered, and for your money you’d bet she actually isn’t.

      “Thanks,” you tell Rose. Your grip on your pencil has gone a little too strong. Rose smiles, takes one of your pens, and doodles an approximation of Hella Jeff upside-down on your paper.

      “Truly, today the Rose was... a distaction,” she says, with a wink.

           

 

* * *

 

 

      You’re alone, eating something resembling lunch--with something resembling a vegetable, even!--when Karkat walks up to you and slaps a neatly folded chart on the kitchen table.

      “Where do you keep getting these?” you ask, taking another bite of what is presumably pasta.

      “I made it,” Karkat says. You eye the neatly-organized images of what are clearly quadrant symbols, then look back to him. He amends, “Okay, I printed it out.”

      “Can you tell me why I’ve got another one of these old-school, asinine charts in front of my face?” you ask.

      Karkat jabs his finger first at the diamond, then at the heart. “We,” he says, “are vacillating between these two, mostly.”

      Moirallegience and matespritship. You consider this. “Seems right.” Karkat looks affronted.

      “You don’t think there’s a problem with this?”

      “No, dude. Why would I? Didn’t we already establish that whatever this is is like... not really following quadrant rules? Besides, that’s what most human romances are like.” You take another bite. “The healthy ones, at least. I mean, I guess. Not like I have anything else to go on.”

      Karkat stares down at his chart with a clear air of expectations shattered. “Come on, Karkat,” you continue, “you know that, you’ve seen approximately ten thousand and four shitty human rom coms with me.”

      “Nine thousand of those were repeats of Good Luck Chuck,” Karkat grumbles.

      “Yeah, well,” you shrug. “I don’t think a single one of the heinous human romcoms we’ve watched have featured two dudes as the leads, and yet here we are. I think we’ll survive if we don’t exactly fit into some chart you printed off the insectoid internet.”

      Karkat bristles. “Well ex-fucking-cuse me, Dave, for thinking you’d ever listened to a single fucking piece of schoolfeeding I’ve ever given you regarding Troll culture! Who cares about how romance is supposed to be done! While we’re at it, let’s just throw all sense of propriety out the window and walk around in the nude with sticks up our waste chutes for all to see!”

      You put down your fork. “You are overreacting.”

      “I am not fucking overreacting!” Karkat yells, mashing his chart into a crumpled ball. He stomps out of the room.

  


 

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

CG: OKAY, I OVERREACTED.

TG: yeah

CG: I’M SORRY.

TG: its cool, i get it

CG: IT IS NOT “COOL”, DAVE. I WAS INAPPROPRIATE.

TG: i mean

TG: yeah but its okay

TG: it wasnt a huge deal just like be aware of when youre doing that next time

TG: uh

TG: i forgive you

CG: GOOD. THANK YOU.

TG: ...

TG: so like

TG: did you wanna talk about it still, because i get the feeling you wanna talk about it

TG: and i just want to point out that you are sounding very much like me when i was still having my gay crisis or whatever it was

TG: the thing i still sorta sometimes have i guess

TG: anyway

TG: i guess i just think you should think about why the fact that we are vacillating between quadrants is actually bothering you

TG: if its because its how you really feel then thats cool thats how you feel

TG: if its because you think you “shouldnt” be that way then maybe you should think about that, thats all im sayin

TG: karkat

TG: yo karkat

TG: you okay over there bro

CG: YEAH

CG: YEAH. I’M JUST THINKING.

CG: FUCK.

TG: yeah

TG: i mean you said yourself when we first started doing

TG: uh the dating thing i guess

TG: that how you were feeling about me and everything wasnt how quadrants were supposed to work and you still seemed like you wanted to do it

TG: so i mean

TG: that hasnt changed has it

CG: BUT THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE HUMAN, ISN’T IT? I KNOW IT CAN’T WORK THAT WAY WITH YOU, AND WE WERE REALLY CLOSE FRIENDS BEFORE THIS STARTED, SO I ASSUMED IT WAS THAT I JUST NEED TO ORGANIZE MY HORRENDOUS PILE OF FEELINGS BETTER.

CG: NO!

CG: NO, THAT HASN’T CHANGED. I WAS JUST TYPING.

TG: your horrendous pile of feelings??? are you serious

CG: SHUT UP.

TG: you really know how to fucking woo a guy karkat

CG: DAVE, I APOLOGIZE FOR WOUNDING YOUR DELICATE SENSIBILITIES, BUT PLEASE JUST LET ME HAVE YET ANOTHER ONE OF MY MENTAL BREAKDOWNS IN PEACE.

TG: nah

CG: “NAH”, HE SAYS. THE PICTURE OF GOD DAMN ELOQUENCE.

TG: thats me

TG: you like my sweet way with words dude dont lie

TG: i bet i could bust out a rhyme now and youd be over there all tapping your feet

CG: FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD LEFT IN THIS UNIVERSE, IF THERE IS EVEN THE TINIEST SHRED OF GOODWILL STILL OUT THERE FOR MY MISERABLE EXISTENCE, YOU WILL NOT RAP AT ME ABOUT THIS.

CG: IF YOU HAVE ANY POSITIVE EMOTIONS TOWARDS ME AT ALL YOU WILL NOT RAP, DAVE.

TG: fine jesus christ

TG: i wont rap no need to be so harsh

CG: THANK YOU!

TG: ok im gonna say something very rose-like here so bear with me

TG: and you dont have to agree with me or anything but please at least just consider it ok

CG: FOR FUCK’S SAKE, JUST TELL ME.

TG: have you considered

TG: that while the emotions that make up the quadrants as you described them are very valid and distinct and the norm for most trolls

TG:  perhaps the stern requirements of the quadrant system in and of itself are just a socially-enforced structure, similar to what we talked about to the point of exhaustion with all my fuckin human stuff

TG: ?

TG: ok im gonna take off my fucking phd hat now

TG: hello

TG: meteor to karkat

CG: I

CG: MAYBE????

TG: ok

CG: I AM GIVING IT A SOLID MAYBE.

TG: well thats actually better than i expected

CG: YOU SHOULD BE THE ONE SITTING THERE WITH A PILLOW IN YOUR LAP, LOOKING CONCERNED. THIS IS SICKENING.

TG: hahaha

CG: I NEED TO GO THINK.

TG: sure dude

 

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] --

 

 

 

 

      “Are you still thinking about that?” you ask later, sprawled across Karkat’s cushion pile. “Again, you don’t have to agree with me, man, it was just a thought. You look like you’ve just returned from the horrors of war or something.”

      Karkat is leaning against the wall, staring off in a sort of hollow, dismal way that makes you want to--to pull him into your bosom, or something equally as tender and corny. “Dave,” he says, “I think you’re right.”

      You take a moment to weigh your response. “How come?”

      “I think I’m not--” Karkat starts, making an abortive gesture with his hands. “I think maybe I’ve always been like this. I’ve never felt just one way about someone, even with Terezi it was like--and maybe flipping is normal, I know it is in books and movies, but I’m never--I can’t be happy, just being in one quadrant with someone.” Now that he’s said it, his face falls and you feel an enormous pang in your heart. “At least, I don’t think I could just be in one quadrant with you.”

      You sit up because your chest feels suddenly heavy. “I feel like you just confessed something that should make me feel pretty great, but you look miserable.”

      Karkat’s gaze flicks back to you, startled. “That’s not what I--fuck, I can’t do any of this right--”

      “Hey,” you say, “I’m just teasing.” You grab his hand, and though his brow is still furrowed, he squeezes back. For a little while, neither of you speak.

      “Listen,” you say eventually, “You better settle down because I am about to make this kinda weird like all of our conversations seem to be. But--I want to continue having uncomfortably deep conversations with you, and I also want to continue making out with you. Maybe that doesn’t fit into any of the types of relationships you’re used to, or that you thought you’d have, but that’s what I wanna do. So you’re not gonna hear any complaints from me about not fitting into quadrants or whatever.”

      “But you’re a human,” Karkat says roughly. “None of that matters to you anyway, and I’m just--I didn’t think I was different,” he says, eyes wide when he turns to look at you. “I’ve been trying so hard to live up to--I didn’t think I was like this.”

      “I get it,” you say. You fucking do, after all. Karkat doesn’t say anything more, but he does sit down on the cushions with you, and eventually he sighs, leans back, and flings his arms out to either side. His elbow hits you in the sternum.

      You stare up in the vague direction of the sun-lamp he brought in here for you. “If you’re not, uh, okay with like, officially being quandrant-less, that’s fine,” you say tentatively. “But I’m just gonna tell you right now that, like--we can be friends with no making out, if that’s what you want to be, but I don’t think I can just make out with you and not have talks or this awkwardly sincere bro time like we have been doing.” God, this is embarrassing. And painful--you stand by what you said, but the thought of breaking off whatever you’ve been doing makes you feel physically ill.

      “That’s not what I want either,” Karkat says quickly. You let yourself feel relieved. “It’s just--weird for me. I might freak out about it. I’m just giving you the heads-up that it’s gonna be weird for me, okay?”

      “Dude, you’re already dealing with all my weird hang-ups about this. I think it’s fair enough if it goes both ways.”

      “Okay,” Karkat says, determinedly. “Okay.” When you turn to look at him, he smiles back at you.

 

 

      “Are we human boyfriends?” Karkat says abruptly a bit later, propping himself up. You laugh, unexpectedly.

      “I don’t know,” you say. You aren’t sure how you feel about the term, or whether it applies to you yet, and the both of you still don’t know how or if or when you want anyone else to know What You Are. “Do you want to be?”

      “I don’t know,” Karkat says. “Does it matter if we are?”

      “I don’t know,” you say again. “Man. This is romance, right here.”

      “Quadrants or not, I will show you actual goddamn romance someday if it kills me,” Karkat says fiercely, and there you go with the giggling again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      Though it’s been established in your two-odd years on the meteor that you’re both probably not the greatest examples of culinary talent that humanity had to offer, you and Rose are still determined to represent at least your very small experiences of Earth Cooking, and so group mealtimes continue.

      After you place what will hopefully turn out to be a pizza in the oven, you notice Rose’s left arm. There’s a purple splotch on the inside of her elbow, and at the center, a pinprick of deep red. You grab her arm before you can really think about what you’re doing, and Rose shakes you off in visible irritation.

      “It looks like you put a needle in there,” you say. That familiar white-hot buzz of emotion—the one you’re beginning to internally refer to as The Rose-Induced Anger—is starting up in your throat.

      Rose pulls her sleeve down, rolling her eyes. “I assure you, dear brother, I haven’t taken up another nefarious vice in the absence of alcohol. I merely had some blood drawn.” The corner of her mouth quirks up a little. “I always did bruise easily.”

      “You stuck a fucking needle in your arm? Why?” you say. “I feel like that’s the sort of thing that needs to be done by a professional—“

      “Because there are so many of those around,” Rose snaps. “For goodness’ sake, Dave, we made sure it was sterile. It’s not like I could die from this sort of thing anymore, anyway.”

      She might not _perma_ -die from it, but she could get sick, or get an infection, or any number of things that Rose never seems to think about when dealing with her own damn self. “Are you letting Kanaya… feed off you?” you say, and the floor lurches a little even though that’s probably one of the dumbest, most overwrought-vampire-fantasy-novel sentences that’s ever left your mouth.

      “Dave,” Rose says sharply, “number one: sit down, I do not presently want your puke decorating my new dress. Number two: yes, and _again_ , it was perfectly safe, so there’s really no reason for you to be worked up over this—“

      “I’m not worked up--and I don’t need to sit down, I don’t need a fucking _fainting couch,_ Rose, let go of me.” Your slap away her steadying hands even though the thought of Rose bottling up her own blood to give Kanaya as a snack is still making you feel vaguely sick. Rose puts her hands on her hips instead, staring you down, and you just stand there like the awkward fuck you are, feeling both justified in your anger and ridiculous for it under her gaze.

      “Dave, just please think about this logically for a moment,” Rose says. “We want Kanaya to survive as much as any of the rest of us, and she happens to need blood occasionally to do that. All of the trolls have been taking turns, and—“

      “They have?”

      “Yes,” Rose says, voice the pure example of a teen girl at the very end of her patience. “You’ve _seen her_ drinking blood from cups, Dave, where did you think she got it? And I started thinking, perhaps because she is my matesprit and my _girlfriend_ , that I ought to contribute. She doesn’t _bite_ me like in the terrible movies I’m sure you’re envisioning, and I do not give more than I can handle. End of discussion.”

      You’re not convinced that Rose actually fully understands the threshold of ‘what she can handle’, but arguing about that sort of thing has never turned out well. Lacking anything else to say, you ask, “Does it even work with human blood?”

      “As it turns out, yes,” Rose says. “Though the uncertainty surrounding that kept me from contributing sooner.”

      So it’s been going on for a while. You do sit down. Rose sits down across from you. The Strilonde Staredown begins, but you’re suddenly too tired to deal with it.

      “Just take care of yourself,” you sigh. Rose huffs a little laugh.

      “Like you, Sir Ate-Nothing-But-Ramen-Noodles-For-Three-Weeks?”

      “I was excited to get that captchalogue, okay?” you snap. “It’s not like that’s even the longest I’ve survived on cup noodles, jesus.”

      Rose hoists herself up with one hand against the table. “Well, eat a vegetable of some sort while we’re waiting on our pizza _avec fromage_ to finish cooking.”

      “You don’t speak French,” you shoot at her retreating back.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      As a rule, you get along pretty well with Kanaya. You’re not super close or anything, but she is usually pretty good-natured about your various ramblings and Freudian slips, and she’s artistic and kind of awkward but still elegant, which are traits you admire in a person, and she seems to find you mostly amusing, so. Also, she is the best gossip-partner when you get up for coffee during what should be the middle of your sleep cycle.

      Now, though, you can’t look at her without suddenly remembering that she has literally tasted Rose’s blood.

      She’s your sister’s girlfriend, though, and you don’t exactly want to confront her about it, but hell. You’re both grossed out and a little curious.

      “What does blood taste like to you?” you finally ask her one afternoon, because fuck showing restraint. Rose and Karkat, sitting nearby, both shoot you looks as though they’d very much like to strangle you, but Kanaya just blinks slowly and runs her tongue over her top lip, like she’s remembering.

      “Salty, depending on the hemotype,” she tells you. “Sometimes metallic.”

      Rose has hidden her face in her book, and Karkat has outright turned his back on you. You think, _come on, like you haven’t wondered the exact same thing_.

      You think about the various times you’ve busted a lip. “It tastes metallic to me, too, but I’ve never wanted to actually drink it.”

      “Well,” Kanaya says patiently, “you do not require drinking it to survive.”

      “I guess not,” you agree. “What’s that like?”

      “Dave,” Rose says, snapping her book closed. She’s looking at you with warning in her eyes, but Kanaya suddenly smiles like she’s got a secret.

      “I suppose I could describe it to you, but you would require more information to understand, and I’m afraid that might be a rather long story.”

      You put your chin in your hands. “Do tell. I’ve got all fuckin day.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

      Karkat falls asleep on your shoulder watching fuckin’ _27 Dresses_ , and it’s truly adorable. It’s so adorable that you don’t attempt to move him even when the credits start rolling.

      It’s not quite so adorable when he jerks awake and head-butts you in the chin.

      “Holy _shit,_ ” he yells as you clutch your hands to your poor, battered face. “Holy fuck, Dave! I’m sorry, I didn’t--I didn’t see you.”

      “Of course you didn’t see me, you were sleeping,” you gasp. Karkat puts his hands over yours where they’re covering your chin, like he could heal your new bruise with willpower alone. You both start laughing.

      “What were you dreaming about?” you ask once he’s settled back in at your side.

      “My lusus,” he says, sounding vague. “Sollux. Nepeta. When they were all still alive, or here.”

      He’s being sincere, and not over-the-top, and Karkat at his most reasonable is also, you’ve learned, potentially his most vulnerable. You squeeze his hand.

      “It wasn’t your fault,” you tell him after a moment, because his eyes have suddenly started to look somewhere very far away. Karkat sighs.

      “Maybe not,” he says. Then he reaches forward to snap the husktop closed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      The next time you attempt to practice on your own, Terezi walks in on you.

      It startles you enough that you lose your balance and fall, and _that_ startles you enough that it snaps you right out of whatever smooth mental training zone you’d been in. Your hands start shaking so bad that you have to press them hard against the floor to get any kind of balance. Above you, Terezi swims into view, frowning.

      “Coolkid, it is very hard for me to say this, but you’re starting to worry me.”

      You laugh at that, breathy and weak. At the moment you’re just glad that this isn’t nearly as bad as the last time.

      “You watched me, a lot of my life, right?” you ask, when you have your voice back.

      “ _Well_ ,” Terezi says, “I _guess_ you could say I ‘watched’.”

      The image of her licking a computer screen comes to mind.

      “Well, that,” you start, unable to quite find the words. “That, how I was raised--that wasn’t right. That’s not how--not how humans, not how people should be raised, all fucking constantly watching their backs in case the one god damn person they even have regular contact with decides to end them--” and if you go on much longer you won’t be able to hold it together, so you don’t. Terezi sits down next to you, leaning on her cane for support.

      “I would not know about that,” she says. “Perhaps you should talk to Karkat about it?”

      For some reason, this sets you off.  “Look, Karkat’s--I’ve told him a little but he’s--I don’t know what you all think we are, but whatever it is, it’s not-- I’m not going to only ever speak to one fucking person about a problem, god forbid I assume there’s anyone else on this fucking hurtling space rock who might care!”

      Terezi actually holds her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Goodness gracious, mister red blood! I was just making a suggestion! I never asked to be part of your personal drama!”

      You start getting to your feet, shaking be damned. “Then don’t walk in on a guy’s personal, private time in a giant fucking science room.”

      “Excuse me, but I use this room too,” Terezi says, getting to her feet as well, but she makes no move to leave.

      You pick up your sword. “What for?”

      “Thinking, mostly,” Terezi says. She hums. “I would say, lately, I use it mostly to mope.”

      “That’s no good.”

      “Perhaps we can be alone here together,” Terezi suggests. “It will keep me from moping, and I can offer helpful tips. I can tell you have been improving in your swordsmanship.” You snort. “It’s true!”

      You look at Terezi. Still small and pointy like when you first met her, still standing straight-backed, but no longer smiling. She looks tired most of the time now, which is starting to worry you, but you know from trial and error that she won’t outright accept any help from you or Karkat.

      You step back toward the middle of the room, and get a better handle on your ridiculous welsh sword. Its weight in your arms is still heavy, still different than what you grew up with. Your entire body is buzzing with nervous energy. “Terezi, let’s play two truths and a lie. I’ll start.”

      You see her flash a grin from the corner of your eye. “Whatever you want, Dave.”

      “One,” you say, stretching out your arms and legs, “John was my first actual friend. Two, I totally went god tier by accident. And three, I fucking love swordfighting.”

      “This game doesn’t work when you always put the lie last,” Terezi points out.

      “Yeah, well,” you say, finding your stance for the first exercise, “can’t win ‘em all.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

      You think you remember the first time you showed an interest in dead things.

      You’d noticed one of those small green lizards that always seemed to get everywhere lying in the hallway outside your apartment. It wasn’t moving, and by the time you’d gotten close enough to squat down and peer at it, it was very apparent that it was dead. You’d thought, at the time, that maybe one of the neighbors’ cats had gotten to it, and then gotten bored.

      It looked sad, and kind of lovely, and you didn’t want to just leave it out there like that.

      So you’d stored it in a shoebox under your bed for a while, but then you couldn’t look at it, and then it started to smell, and then you didn’t want to look at it anymore.

      The wonders of living in the age of the internet meant that it wasn’t difficult for you to look up how to preserve things, and then that was that. Another hobby born, one of many you’d cultivated as a kid to fill the long hours.

      You aren’t sure _why,_ exactly, keeping dead things began interesting you. It wasn’t like you were _glad_ the things were dead--you never wanted things to die, even the stupid crows that bothered you on the roof--it’s just that it was interesting once they were. It was fascinating, seeing them there, knowing they’d once been alive and that now they weren’t. That they had once moved and felt warmth and vibrated with the energy of everything else in the world, but that now they were still, and cold, and empty. Like you would be, probably, some day.

      You’d wondered what you might look like, probably, someday. If your bro would look at you--because you were convinced at the time that he would outlive you, no matter what--and think you looked sad, or lovely. If he’d put you in a box, or leave you out there wherever you fell.

      You think now that if you’d realized, back then, just how many times you’d see yourself dead in the future, maybe you’d have changed your mind about pursuing that particular train of thought.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      In the end, you still end up shaking after practicing, and with Terezi there you have to excuse yourself for a while to calm down, but you do it; you calm yourself down and yeah, it still sucks, but at least you know now that you can do it yourself. You can do it, when you have to.

      Terezi is still waiting in the hallway when you come back, and as you start walking to dinner she tells you how much you smell.

      Karkat says the same thing when you both run into him halfway back. When Terezi starts walking a bit ahead of you, her cane clacking, he takes your hand.

      You keep your fingers entwined almost the whole way to the common room.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      You walk in on Rose pulling a bottle of alchemized liquor from one of the kitchen cabinets.

      You and Rose look at each other for a few seconds. Then she sighs and puts the bottle back.

      “I wasn’t,” she starts, but then slumps her shoulders and hoists herself up to sit on the counter. “I don’t know if I was. I never anticipated how difficult it would be to stop once I’d started. It’s making me think about my mother, how hard it must have been for her...”

      It seems like Rose is about to board the train to Sad-Possibly-Drunk Town, and you’d really like to get that ticket away from her before she does. “Why don’t you just get rid of the bottle?” you ask. Rose swings her feet a little, looking rueful.

      “I could always just make more,” she says. “I figured out how to do it in the first place.”

      “Yeah, but that requires way more effort than just grabbing a bottle from a cabinet,” you say. “You’re not, like, proving anything or setting some cosmic standard for your strength of will by keeping it right there to try and resist. You’re just making it harder on yourself.” _You’re always doing stupid shit like that_ , you manage not to add out loud.

      Rose frowns. Then she hops down from the counter, grabs the bottle again, and holds out her arm to you. “Shall we, then?” she says. “I do want to stop and bring Kanaya, though. I’d promised her--well, I feel that if we’re going to symbolically chuck my drinking problem into the bottomless void, she should be there to witness it.”

      So you and Rose walk across the meteor with your arms linked at the elbow like a couple of creepy ghost twins from a horror film, and when that gets a little awkward--you’re more than a bit taller than her now--you glide a few inches from the floor, because you can. You make a pit-stop for Kanaya (you stop gliding at this point because that’s just rude), and then Rose leads you both up to an observation platform you’ve never seen before. There’s a rug, a little table, and empty teacups off to the side, so it must be one of the places she sneaks off to with Kanaya.

      That makes you feel a little weird.

      Rose steps over to the very edge of the platform, the neck of the bottle in her fist, and then looks back at you and Kanaya. “Should I say something poignant?”

      “Just chuck it!” you yell. Kanaya laughs.

      “Say something if you wish to say it,” she says. Rose’s answering smile is gentle. She turns around and holds the bottle up to her face.

      “Goodnight, sweet prince,” she murmurs, darkly. Then she pulls her arm back and throws the bottle, hard, into the void.

      The meteor is moving fast enough that you don’t really see any satisfying arc, but you whoop all the same.

 

 

* * *

 

 

      It’s very late at night, and you’re watching a movie on the couch--again, of course you are, because what else is there to do--and Karkat’s fingers have been tracing small circles on your shoulder for ten minutes now. So when the credits start to roll, it’s not as difficult as you anticipated to say _fuck it_ to the ball of anxiety that always seems to be roiling in beneath your ribcage, and to lean over to press your mouth to his.

      Karkat, for his part, seems to have been waiting for this; the hand that was on your shoulder slides into your hair, and the other comes up to the back of your neck.

      Karkat always kisses you like he’s really into it, like it’s his culminating moment in a romantic comedy--normally this puts you a little bit on edge, but today, feeling high with the thrill of finally being able to make a move without self-sabotaging, it sends overwhelming thrills down your spine.

      The credits end. You’re left in silence and the harsh glare of the husktop monitor.

      You pull away, feeling giddy. “Hang on,” you say, and Karkat backs away politely, putting a few more inches between your thighs. But you just pull off your shades and take a moment to set them on the table beside the couch. Then you put one arm around his shoulders and lean in.

      His smile, before your lips meet, might be wider than yours.

 

 

 

      After that, things seem easy. You’re giddy again with the thrill of being with someone you like, who likes you too; and the freedom to do what you like with the person you like.

      The two of you share looks across the common room, stifling laughter, and find reasons to casually touch. You sneak around the meteor holding hands and making out against hallway walls like a couple of highschoolers--which, you guess, is what you would be if the world hadn’t ended.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

      One night you fall asleep, and when you open your eyes on the other side you’re back in the dreambubble living room of your Houston apartment. Your bro’s puppets watch you with glassy eyes, and you wake yourself up in a panic.

      You end up back there the next night, and the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that.

 

 

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on tumblr! @madseason


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